Find in Files: Search all code in Team Foundation Server

Question

Is there a way to search the latest version of every file in TFS for a specific string or regex? This is probably the only thing I miss from Visual Source Safe...

Currently I perform a Get Latest on the entire codebase and use Windows Search, but this gets quite painful with over 1GB of code in 75,000 files.

EDIT: Tried the powertools mentioned, but the "Wildcard Search" option appears to only search filenames and not contents.

UPDATE: We have implemented a customised search option in an existing MOSS (Search Server) installation.

Answer 1

Team Foundation Server 2015 (on-premises) and Visual Studio Team Services (cloud version) include built-in support for searching across all your code and work items.

You can do simple string searches like foo, boolean operations like foo OR bar or more complex language-specific things like class:WebRequest

You can read more about it here: https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/docs/search/overview

Answer 2

In my case, writing a small utility in C# helped. Links that helped me - http://pascallaurin42.blogspot.com/2012/05/tfs-queries-searching-in-all-files-of.html

How to list files of a team project using tfs api?

using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Client; using Microsoft.TeamFoundation.VersionControl.Client; using Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Framework.Client; using System.IO;  namespace TFSSearch { class Program {     static string[] textPatterns = new[] { "void main(", "exception", "RegisterScript" };  //Text to search     static string[] filePatterns = new[] { "*.cs", "*.xml", "*.config", "*.asp", "*.aspx", "*.js", "*.htm", "*.html",                                             "*.vb", "*.asax", "*.ashx", "*.asmx", "*.ascx", "*.master", "*.svc"}; //file extensions      static void Main(string[] args)     {         try         {             var tfs = TfsTeamProjectCollectionFactory              .GetTeamProjectCollection(new Uri("http://{tfsserver}:8080/tfs/}")); // one some servers you also need to add collection path (if it not the default collection)              tfs.EnsureAuthenticated();              var versionControl = tfs.GetService<VersionControlServer>();               StreamWriter outputFile = new StreamWriter(@"C:\Find.txt");             var allProjs = versionControl.GetAllTeamProjects(true);             foreach (var teamProj in allProjs)             {                 foreach (var filePattern in filePatterns)                 {                     var items = versionControl.GetItems(teamProj.ServerItem + "/" + filePattern, RecursionType.Full).Items                                 .Where(i => !i.ServerItem.Contains("_ReSharper"));  //skipping resharper stuff                     foreach (var item in items)                     {                         List<string> lines = SearchInFile(item);                         if (lines.Count > 0)                         {                             outputFile.WriteLine("FILE:" + item.ServerItem);                             outputFile.WriteLine(lines.Count.ToString() + " occurence(s) found.");                             outputFile.WriteLine();                         }                         foreach (string line in lines)                         {                             outputFile.WriteLine(line);                         }                         if (lines.Count > 0)                         {                             outputFile.WriteLine();                         }                     }                 }                 outputFile.Flush();             }         }         catch (Exception e)         {             string ex = e.Message;             Console.WriteLine("!!EXCEPTION: " + e.Message);             Console.WriteLine("Continuing... ");         }         Console.WriteLine("========");         Console.Read();     }      // Define other methods and classes here     private static List<string> SearchInFile(Item file)     {         var result = new List<string>();          try         {             var stream = new StreamReader(file.DownloadFile(), Encoding.Default);              var line = stream.ReadLine();             var lineIndex = 0;              while (!stream.EndOfStream)             {                 if (textPatterns.Any(p => line.IndexOf(p, StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase) >= 0))                     result.Add("=== Line " + lineIndex + ": " + line.Trim());                  line = stream.ReadLine();                 lineIndex++;             }         }         catch (Exception e)         {             string ex = e.Message;             Console.WriteLine("!!EXCEPTION: " + e.Message);             Console.WriteLine("Continuing... ");         }          return result;     } } }