Develop Reference

C# winforms get nth folders from path

I've got an absolute path available to me. Say: C:/Program/CoreFiles/Folder1/Folder2/File.txt.
I need to copy that file to C:/Program/Projects/ProjectName/ but it needs to keep Folder1/Folder2/File.txt intact. So the end result should be C:/Program/Projects/ProjectName/Folder1/Folder2/File.txt.
My first attempt at solving this was to try and get the relative path between 2 absolute paths. Found Path.GetRelativePath(string, string) which obviously didn't help as it wasn't meant for WinForms. It would mess up anyway as the final result would be C:/Program/Projects/ProjectName/CoreFiles/Folder1/Folder2/File.txt.
The target directory is empty and I don't know the relative path to copy beforehand other than somehow getting that info out of the absolute path. Since File.Copy won't create folders that don't exist yet, I need to create them first. So how do I get the path that leads up to the file from the CoreFiles directory out of the absolute path?
The only working solution I can come up with is using regex to just replace CoreFiles with Projects/ProjectName in the path string and work with that. But that somehow seems the wrong approach.

Since you can't use Path.GetRelativePath. I suggest looking at another answer that describes how to do this yourself.
Like here...
How to get relative path from absolute path
Using the method in that answer, you can do the rest of your task as shown below.
string sourcePath = "C:/Program/CoreFiles/Folder1/Folder2/File.txt";
string sourceRoot = "C:/Program/CoreFiles/";
string destinationRoot = "C:/Program/Projects/ProjectName/";
// Use built-in .NET Path.GetRelativePath if you can. Otherwise use a custom function. Like here https://stackoverflow.com/a/340454/1812944
string relativePath = MakeRelativePath(sourceRoot, sourcePath);
// Combine the paths, and make the directory separators all the same.
string destinationPath = Path.GetFullPath(Path.Combine(destinationRoot, relativePath));
// Create nested folder structure for your files.
Directory.CreateDirectory(Path.GetDirectoryName(destinationPath));
// Copy the file over.
File.Copy(sourcePath, destinationPath);

How to copy an image to application folder?

I already know how to browse for an image using open file dialog. So let's say we already got the path :
string imagePath = "Desktop/Images/SampleImage.jpg";
I want to copy that file, into my application folder :
string appFolderPath = "SampleApp/Images/";
How to copy the given image to the appFolderPath programmatically?
Thank you.

You could do something like this:
var path = Path.Combine(
System.AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory,
"Images",
fileName);
File.Copy(imagePath, path);
where fileName is the actual name of the file only (including the extension).
UPDATE: the Path.Combine method will cleanly combine strings into a well-formed path. For example, if one of the strings does have a backslash and the other doesn't it won't matter; they are combined appropriately.
The System.AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory, per MSDN, does the following:
Gets the base directory that the assembly resolver uses to probe for assemblies.
That's going to be the executable path you're running in; so the path in the end (and let's assume fileName is test.txt) would be:
{path_to_exe}\Images\test.txt

string path="Source imagepath";
File.Copy(System.AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory+"\\Images", path);
\ System.AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory is to provide path of the application folder

Obtaining exact path without filename

I'm creating an extension for visual studio 2012 and am having a hard time finding the location of the arbitrary file that the extension is running behind. Does anyone have a good way of doing this through the extension? Maybe with reflection or some other sort of Path method?

You can do this:
Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location
Then you need to look at the the functions in Path to find the directory. I think its one of these:
Path.GetDirectoryName
Path.GetPathRoot

I used the path extensions
Works great on https://dotnetfiddle.net/
using System.IO;
var path = "/test/test2/test.txt";
Console.WriteLine($"GetFileName {Path.GetFileName(path)}");
Console.WriteLine($"GetFullPath {Path.GetFullPath(path)}");
Console.WriteLine($"GetDirectoryName {Path.GetDirectoryName(path)}");
// correct exact path without filename
Console.WriteLine($"dirPath {path.Substring(0, path.Length - Path.GetFileName(path).Length)}");
/*
Prints:
GetFileName test.txt
GetFullPath /test/test2/test.txt
GetDirectoryName /test/test2
dirPath /test/test2/
*/
Note
the path separator has to be native to your machine. E.g. /test/test2/test.txt won't work on windows while \test\test2\test.txt will

string executingtitle = _applicationObject.Solution.FullName;
string[] title = executingtitle.Split( ',' );
string filename = title[0];
string filepath = Path.GetFullPath(filename);
One of my co-workers helped me out. Here's the code for future reference.

Write a text file to a sub-folder

I am trying to write out a text file to: C:\Test folder\output\, but without putting C:\ in.
i.e.
This is what I have at the moment, which currently works, but has the C:\ in the beginning.
StreamWriter sw = new StreamWriter(#"C:\Test folder\output\test.txt");
I really want to write the file to the output folder, but with out having to have C:\ in the front.
I have tried the following, but my program just hangs (doesn't write the file out):
(#"\\Test folder\output\test.txt");
(#".\Test folder\output\test.txt");
("//Test folder//output//test.txt");
("./Test folder//output//test.txt");
Is there anyway I could do this?
Thanks.

Thanks for helping guys.
A colleague of mine chipped in and helped as well, but #Kami helped a lot too.
It is now working when I have:
string path = string.Concat(Environment.CurrentDirectory, #"\Output\test.txt");
As he said: "The CurrentDirectory is where the program is run from.

I understand that you would want to write data to a specified folder. The first method is to specify the folder in code or through configuration.
If you need to write to specific drive or current drive you can do the following
string driveLetter = Path.GetPathRoot(Environment.CurrentDirectory);
string path = diveLetter + #"Test folder\output\test.txt";
StreamWriter sw = new StreamWriter(path);
If the directory needs to be relative to the current application directory, then user AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory to get the current directory and use ../ combination to navigate to the required folder.

You can use System.IO.Path.GetDirectoryName to get the directory of your running application and then you can add to this the rest of the path..
I don't get clearly what you want from this question , hope this get it..

A common technique is to make the directory relative to your exe's runtime directory, e.g., a sub-directory, like this:
string exeRuntimeDirectory =
System.IO.Path.GetDirectoryName(
System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location);
string subDirectory =
System.IO.Path.Combine(exeRuntimeDirectory, "Output");
if (!System.IO.Directory.Exists(subDirectory))
{
// Output directory does not exist, so create it.
System.IO.Directory.CreateDirectory(subDirectory);
}
This means wherever the exe is installed to, it will create an "Output" sub-directory, which it can then write files to.
It also has the advantage of keeping the exe and its output files together in one location, and not scattered all over the place.

C# How to grep the last word from a directory path?

I have a program that "greps" out various directory paths from a log text file and prints various results according to the word.
Examples of Directory paths:
C:/Documents and Settings/All Users/Desktop/AccessData FTK Imager.lnk
C:/Documents and Settings/All Users/Start Menu/Programs/AccessData
C:/Documents and Settings/Administrator/Desktop/AccessData FTK Imager.exe:Zone.Identifier
Therefore how can I grep out the file or folder name after the last "/"? This is to help the program to identify between files and folder. Please do take note of the multiple "." and white spaces found within a directory paths. etc "Imager.exe:Zone.Identifier". Therefore it is difficult to use if(!name.contains()".")
Etc. How to get the "AccessData FTK Imager.lnk" or "AccessData" or "AccessData FTK Imager.exe:Zone.Identifier" from the path STRING?!
May someone please advise on the methods or codes to solve this problem? Thanks!
The codes:
if (!token[7].Contains("."))
{
Console.WriteLine("The path is a folder?");
Console.WriteLine(token[7]);
Console.WriteLine(actions);
MacActions(actions);
x = 1;
}

Use the Path class when working with file paths, and use the File and Directory class when working with actual files and folders.
string str1=#"C:/Documents and Settings/All Users/Desktop/AccessData FTK Imager.lnk";
string str2=#"C:/Documents and Settings/All Users/Start Menu/Programs/AccessData";
string str3=#"C:/Documents and Settings/Administrator/Desktop/AccessData FTK Imager.exe:Zone.Identifier";
Console.WriteLine(Path.GetFileName(str1));
Console.WriteLine(Path.GetFileName(str2));
Console.WriteLine(Path.GetFileName(str3));
outputs:
AccessData FTK Imager.lnk
AccessData
Zone.Identifier <-- it chokes here because of the :
This class operates on strings, as I do not have those particular files and/or folders on my system. Also it's impossible to determine whether AccessData is meant to be a folder or a file without an extension.
I could use some common sense and declare everything with an extension to be a file (Path.GetFileExtension can be used here) and everything else to be a folder.
Or I could just check it the string in question is indeed a file or a folder on my machine using (File.Exists and Directory.Exists respectively).
if (File.Exists(str2))
Console.WriteLine("It's a file");
else if (Directory.Exists(str2))
Console.WriteLine("It's a folder");
else
Console.WriteLine("It's not a real file or folder");

Use Path.GetFileName.
The characters after the last directory character in path. If the last character of path is a directory or volume separator character, this method returns String.Empty.

This is to help the program to identify between files and folder
There is no way to determine is a path represents a file or folder, unless you access the actual file system. A directory name like 'Foo.exe' would be perfectly valid, and a file with no extension ('Foobar') would be valid too.

how about tokenized it with "/" like what you're doing ... and then you'll know that the last token is the file, and whatever before it is the path.

You can simply split the whole string by /
e.g.:
string a="C:/Documents and Settings/All Users/Desktop/AccessData FTK Imager.lnk";
string[] words=a.split('/');
int len=words.length;
so now words[len] returns the data after last slash(/)..
I hope you understand...

I guess you only have a string that represents the name of the file, if that is the case you can't really be sure. It's totally ok to have a folder namen something like Folder.doc. So if you don't have access to the actual file system it is hard to check. You can get close though using regular expression like:
(.*\\)(.+)(\..*)
Try it on: http://www.regexplanet.com/simple/index.html
If you get any output in group number 3 it's likely that it is a file and not a folder. If you don't get some output try this direct after:
(.*\\)(.+)(\..*)?
That will give you the folder in group 2.