SiteUrl BCS deployment error through Visual Studio

Question

Error occurred in deployment step 'Add Solution': The default web application could not be determined. Set the SiteUrl property in feature xxx to the URL of the desired site and retry activation.Parameter name: properties.

I know you can set this manually in feature properties to a predefined url. But we have lots of different environments with different urls? Any ideas on how to solve this?

This is only a problem/required for Visual Studio deploys on certian developer environments, but if one developer sets an url manually it will fail for other environments as well.

Answer 1

Ensure that you have a Web Application at port 80 or 443 with a site collection at the root.

This is needed for the BCS ImportModelReceiver feature receiver to work properly. This receiver is located in the Microsoft.Office.SharePoint.ClientExtensions.dll (Microsoft.Office.SharePoint.ClientExtensions.Deployment.ImportModelReceiver). You can see the code that checks for the Web Application in the GetDefaultWebAppUrl method.

Hope this helps.

J.O.

Answer 2

Do you mean the SiteUrl defined for the project? You can try setting this to http://localhost/.