ASP.NET Core Web Deploy–XML Documentation files are not copied

After deploying our ASP.NET Core application using Web Deploy, we noticed a problem with our Swagger integration through SwashBuckle. Normally SwashBuckle can integrate documentation in your Swagger UI by extracting and reading the XML comments added to your code.

	services.AddSwaggerGen(options =>
	{
	options.SingleApiVersion(new Info
	{
	Version = "v1",
	Title = "Sample API",
	Description = "API Sample",
	TermsOfService = "None"
	});
	//Determine base path for the application.
	var basePath = PlatformServices.Default.Application.ApplicationBasePath;
	//Set the comments path for the swagger json and ui.
	var xmlPath = Path.Combine(basePath, "Sample.FrontEnd.Web.xml");
	options.IncludeXmlComments(xmlPath);
	});

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Problem was that when this XML isn’t copied Swashbuckle throws an exception making our whole API unavailable. Some research showed that the problem appeared after migrating from the project.json format back to csproj, after which the <DocumentationFile> was no longer automatically copied to the output folder during the build or publish process.

The solution I used was to add the following snippet to your csproj:

	<Target Name="PrepublishScript" BeforeTargets="PrepareForPublish">
	<ItemGroup>
	<DocFile Include="bin\$(Configuration)\$(TargetFramework)\*.xml" />
	</ItemGroup>
	<Copy SourceFiles="@(DocFile)" DestinationFolder="$(PublishDir)" SkipUnchangedFiles="false" />
	</Target>
	<!-- Added by Visual Studio, Visual Studio for Mac, or hand code in other IDE -->
	<PropertyGroup Condition=" '$(Configuration)|$(Platform)' == 'Debug|AnyCPU' ">
	<DocumentationFile>bin\Debug\netcoreapp1.1\copydocfile-example.xml</DocumentationFile>
	</PropertyGroup>
	<PropertyGroup Condition=" '$(Configuration)|$(Platform)' == 'Release|AnyCPU' ">
	<DocumentationFile>bin\Release\netcoreapp1.1\copydocfile-example.xml</DocumentationFile>
	</PropertyGroup>

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