Code Search in Azure DevOps Done Right

The code view in Azure DevOps is a great help: without installing any IDE, you can see the whole code of a project. You can brows through all the files and even make changes directly inside your web browser. The only downside is that you miss a lot of the helpful search options you get in Visual Studio. Luckily for us, the Code Search extension gives us exactly that.

Follow this link to the store and install this extension for your organisation. It should take just a few seconds and then you can use a massive improved code search in the web interface of Azure DevOps.

My favourite feature is "Search for definition", that you find in the context menu whenever you right click on a method or a class:

If you click on the menu item, you will be redirected to the search mask and you should find all the definitions of this class in all the repositories of your project. However, there is a little downside. This extension searches for strings and if you have multiple methods or properties with the same name you will get all their definitions. That can be a problem, but it is still a much better search experience than without this extension.

Should this be a problem then you can add multiple additional filters. If you click into the search box and wait a little bit, then you will see an overlay with all the search options:

There are specific options to search for interfaces (interface:), constructors (ctor:), fields (field:) or enumerators (enum:). By using those filters, you should be able to find exactly what you were looking for.

Try Code Search when you view code in the web interface of Azure DevOps. Even when you only use this feature once every month you will be able to save a lot of time.