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Are you looking to eradicate bugs and ensure consistency?

SSW CodeAuditor is a code analysis tool that allows developers to take control of your code, ensuring large, complex source code can be simplified, cleaned and maintained. The built-in rules focus on the most popular .NET languages (C#, VB.NET) for both Windows Forms and ASP.NET; however, the flexibility of SSW CodeAuditor allows the developer to add their own rules to target any language in any text file.

As a project or company grows, managing code standards throughout your team becomes virtually impossible. Consistent code is crucial to future development and maintenance. SSW CodeAuditor lets you take control of your code and automatically review your web apps and projects - giving you more opportunity to spend time where it really matters.

Here at SSW, we face the problem of maintaining our standards across nearly five thousand web pages, over twenty active projects in both Visual Basic (6 and .NET) and C#. There comes a point where a tool to check our work is needed, this tool is SSW CodeAuditor.

SSW CodeAuditor utilizes the power of Regular Expressions and the new Roslyn compiler to audit your code. This powerful feature permits the user to write their own set of rules and have different rules for different projects.

2 methods to keep your code healthy!

Free version
(download from the Visual Studio Gallery)
Pro version
(purchase simply and quickly)
  • Seconds to install and use the extension
  • Quickly scan your solution with just one click
  • Enforce quality control of your source code
  • Rich and powerful UI
  • Customize your code audit
  • Include into your build process
Step 1 - Install extension Step 1 - Install exe
Start Visual Studio to use SSW CodeAuditor - VS Extension
Figure: Step 2 - Start Visual Studio 2010, 2012, 2013 or 2015
Launch SSW CodeAuditor from the start menu and audit your code!
Figure: Step 2 - Launch SSW CodeAuditor
SSW CodeAuditor - VS Extension toolbar
Figure: Step 3 Open your project and click "Audit" on your VS Extension toolbar
Adding and saving customized items to the job
Figure: Step 3 Add a job
More screenshots (Free version – VS Extension) More screenshots (Pro version)

Key Features & Benefits

SSW CodeAuditor allows you to:

  • Verify that coding standards are maintained
  • Prevent bad coding practices
  • Seamlessly integrates with VS.NET
Screen Shot Great, user-friendly wizard style interface. With our standards compliant user interface, you are sure to have a consistently great operating environment with SSW products.
Screen Shot Make your own rules! With our powerful regular expression enabled parsing engine, you have the flexibility to scan any text file for any kinds of rules. Rules can check specific filetypes and have exceptions based on other regular expression matches.
Screen Shot Stay on top of things. CodeAuditor has in-built scheduling and email notification functionality so you can have regular reminders of what needs attention in your projects!
Screen Shot Spanning the big picture. Scan any number of directory trees with extensible path selection. As many development projects can be covered by your rules as you wish.
Screen Shot Report Output. See a sample good report from the CodeAuditor process.
See a sample bad report from the CodeAuditor process.
Screen Shot Visual Studio Team Foundation Server Add-in. Automatically adds an additional Check-in policy that runs SSW CodeAuditor and stops developers from check in code that violates rules.
MS Word Custom check-in policy for VSTS Whitepaper
Built-in sample projects & sample database. We offer a sample database and kinds of sample projects to help you run a professional demo scan.

More Technical Features

CodeAuditor includes the ability to:

  • Scan TFS Pending changes (Only if using VS 2012 or later)
  • Check any text file
  • Check file names
  • Scan project directories for code that violates your rules
  • Perform deep traversal of directories
  • Scan websites for HTML that violates your rules - including the information served by the web server!
  • Validate HTML code by using the Tidy HTML engine
  • Use the report that is written to an .mdb, or to export to XML
  • Organize separate projects into jobs
  • Allow exceptions to rules, thus ignoring files that you are aware of
  • Full scheduling abilities with email alerts, providing regular automated checks on your code base
  • Use Regular Expression to define more rules
  • Use new Roslyn compiler & syntax tree for more explicit rules
  • Helpful template for writing Roslyn rules

Upcoming Features

  • Tatham Oddie Happy (done)
  • Robert MacLean Happy (done)
  • Mike Fourie Happy (done)
  • Upgrade from VS 2008 to VS 2010 (done)
  • Paul Usher Happy - Use Telerik Grid (for filtering rules) (done)
  • Product Wiki (done)
  • Internal Web site to add/update rules - remove the pain of using SQL Scripts
  • Replace the setup+package from wise to WIX
  • The reference problem of 2 .sln - Development time when there are changes the Extension's interfaces
  • Migrate to SQL Azure
  • Share your rules with others
  • Upgrade to LINQ - first need to allow a developer to associate to a company's rules, the use SQL Compact
  • Auto update rules from our webservice + web page to show version history
  • Use VS Task List (like StyleCop)
  • Easy way to Ignore Rules
  • Change from IE report to a pdf that can be emailed (even better a URL on SQL Azure + need a checkbox [x] Public)
  • Right click on a project and "Scan with CodeAuditor" (auto detect type of project)
  • Document hacks on how you debug stuff in SSW.Framework
  • Review SSW.Framework to see what can be removed
  • Designer UI refresh
  • In VS instantly detect and highlight errors as you code, right in the editor (like Resharper)
  • Take advantage of Multi-core processors on scan (using PLinq)
  • Own web site (like SSW SQL Deploy)
  • From Regex To Code DOM/Parse Tree

System Requirements

  • Windows 8
  • .NET Framework 4.5 or later
  • VS 2010 (VSIX extension)
  • VS 2012 Update 2(VSIX extension)
  • VS 2012 Update 2/TFS 2012 Update 1(if using TFS Pending changes scan)
  • VS 2013
  • VS 2015

Predefined Rules - examples of rules you can define

Do they go in CodeAuditor or Link Auditor?

What does the unregistered version give me?

In respect to the unregistered version we know you want to see it working before you buy it. We aim for that.

Note: we also give free version targeted to the little guys
More details see http://www.ssw.com.au/ssw/KB/KB.aspx?KBID=Q658302

SSW provides free phone and email support to answer queries on registered products.

How to show your application is 'SSW CodeAuditor' Compliant?

To show your users that you have taken the care to create a 'healthy' code, you may display this image on any web pages and applications that are validated by CodeAuditor.

CodeAuditor Compliant icon

Here is the HTML to add this icon to your web page:

<a href="http://www.ssw.com.au/ssw/CodeAuditor"> <img src="/ssw/Images/codeauditorcompliant.gif" alt="CodeAuditor compliant" /></a>

You can also download it in .png or .gif formats.

Where should I put this icon?

We recommend the image to be placed on the footer (for websites) or in the "About Box" (for WinForm applications).

Getting Support

If you can't find it in the product documentation, then check our knowledge base for further information and tips about this product.

If you think that one of our rules is incorrect, please tell us about it.

Please send us bug reports and feedback so that we can evolve our software into a product that matches your requirements. We guarantee a response.

I'm Sold... What's next?

Our major competitor is the built in Visual Studio functionality called Code Analysis (previously called FxCop)

SSW CodeAuditor is similar to Microsoft FxCop but has some important differences.

  • FxCop has a good set of rules however writing your own rules is not in the UI... and not many developers go to the trouble of delving down and writing their own assemblies. Consequently they just stick with the rules they are given.
  • CodeAuditor has a lot of rules - none of which are in FxCop, eg. the rules listed on our Rules To Better pages ...
  • FxCop works against compiled assemblies only (it uses MSIL to get information about the code). SSW CodeAuditor on the other hand looks at the source code itself. This means you can worry about the code formatting and comments.
  • FxCop only works against .NET assemblies. SSW CodeAuditor on the other hand works against any plain text files. So now you can write any rules against any files in the solution.
  • Overall FxCop rules are good - however many are obscure (Eg. we do not worry about the Globalization rules , Mobility rules and Portability rules ). SSW CodeAuditor on the other hand has rules that are more 'general developer' oriented.
  • In addition SSW CodeAuditor provides many rules to improve your User Interface.
  • For most users FxCop rules are fixed (unless you want to build a .NET Assembly). SSW CodeAuditor rules can easily be extended using regular expressions.
  • Out of the box FxCop only provides one type of report in xml . SSW CodeAuditor on the other hand provides a report that is flexible and shows the data in different views.
  • Both can be scheduled via a command line. SSW CodeAuditor's wizard makes it real easy to help you keep your code projects clean all the time.
  • SSW CodeAuditor includes a VS.NET Extension, which encourages you to use both within the VS.NET environment .
  • SSW CodeAuditor now supports custom rules written in the new Roslyn compiler (used for C# and VB)
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