Some resources I have in my project are fine and working Ok using string paths but what if I move the project to another directory or to another computer, it will stop working.
Please I need to get the path of the resources folder of my project in a string variable,
Something like this
C:\Users\User1\Documents\<projects folder>\<project name>\Resources\
Thanks in advance.
If you know the path relative to where the app is running, you can do something like this.
First, get the app's running path:
string RunningPath = AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory;
Then, get navigate to the relative path using something like this:
string FileName = string.Format("{0}Resources\\file.txt", Path.GetFullPath(Path.Combine(RunningPath, #"..\..\")));
In this example I my "Resources" folder is located two directories up from my running one.
I should also mention, that if your resource is included in the project, you should be able to get it using:
System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().GetManifestResourceNames();
this will return an array of your resources.
If the files are stored in your project folder, you can retrieve the files using
System.AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory.
This statement retrieves the path as to where your application is installed.
Click Here to get a detailed explanation on this.
This might not be the cleanest way, but it has been useful to me.
If you had a structure like:
C:\...\MyApp\app.exe
C:\...\MyApp\ConfigFiles\MyConfig.xml
The code will return a path relative to the running assembly.
GetPath("ConfigFiles/MyConfig.xml") // returns the full path to MyConfig.xml
private string GetPath(string relativePath)
{
var appPath = System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location;
string pattern = #"^(.+\\)(.+exe)$";
Regex regex = new Regex(pattern, RegexOptions.None);
var match = regex.Match(appPath);
return System.IO.Path.GetFullPath(match.Groups[1].Value + relativePath);
}
You could try to use |DataDirectory| documented here.
Here's a description of how it works from an old Microsoft article
One of the reasons why it was hard to work with database files before
is that the full path to the database was serialized in different
places. This made it harder to share a project and also to deploy the
application. In this version, the .NET runtime added support for what
we call the DataDirectory macro. This allows Visual Studio to put a
special variable in the connection string that will be expanded at
run-time. So instead of having a connection string like this:
"Data Source=.\SQLExpress;AttachDbFileName=c:\program files\app\data.mdf"
You can have a connection string like this:
"Data Source=.\SQLExpress;AttachDbFileName=|DataDirectory|\data.mdf"
This connection string syntax is supported by the SqlClient and OleDb
managed providers.
By default, the |DataDirectory| variable will be expanded as follow:
- For applications placed in a directory on the user machine, this will be the app's (.exe) folder.
- For apps running under ClickOnce, this will be a special data folder created by ClickOnce
- For Web apps, this will be the App_Data folder
Related
I'm making a windows forms project and I was wondering if its possible to point the connection string for my .mdf file to the folder of the programs .exe file so that when I send the program to my someone else it can still find the file.
This is what I'm using right now but I want it to point to the .exe file folder instead if possible.
I've tried everything I can find on this topic and I can't figure it out.
string connectionString = #"Data Source=(LocalDB)\MSSQLLocalDB;AttachDbFilename=C:\Users\Martin\source\repos\Guldkortet\Guldkortet\Kortregister.mdf;Integrated Security=True";
If you mean that your database is in the folder of your main .exe file and you want to get the path, use System.Reflection, more specifically - the assembly's Location property to get the path at runtime, for example:
string assemblyPath = Path.GetDirectoryName(System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location);
and construct the connection string using it:
string connectionString = String.Format("Data Source=(LocalDB)\\MSSQLLocalDB;AttachDbFilename={0}\\Kortregister.mdf;Integrated Security=True", assemblyPath);
There are other options, but that's the answer to your question.
string connectionString = #"Data Source=(LocalDB)\MSSQLLocalDB;AttachDbFilename=|DataDirectory|\Kortregister.mdf;Integrated Security=True";
The |DataDirectory| placeholder will be resolved at run time and what it resolves to depends on the type of application. For a WinForms app, it will resolve to the program folder by default, including while debugging. If you copy your app to a different folder or different machine, it will just work. If you deploy using ClickOnce then a dedicated data directory is created outside the program folder and that path will be resolved correctly.
Note that, because no code is required to construct the connection string, it can be stored in a config file or the like. That means that a user can modify it after deployment if they want their database in a different place or, perhaps, permanently attached to an instance.
I have a .NET application that I am trying to debug and part of my application loads a file from my project. This file is located at
C:\Users\USER_FOLDER\Documents\Visual Studio 2012\Projects\MY_PROJECT\_templates\myFile.html
In my code, I specify a relative path to the file and use the DirectoryInfo class to get the full directory path to my file:
string myFile = (new DirectoryInfo("_templates/myFile.html")).FullName;
However, this returns the following path (extra \'s as escape characters):
"C:\\Program Files\\IIS Express\\_templates\\myFile.html"
I was expecting the path that is returned when debugging in IIS Express would match the first path I listed, not the third. Why is this? Is there something else that I need to set up in my project to have it derive the paths properly? I'm assuming that this would not happen if I deployed my code to a IIS7 site, but I haven't gotten to that testing level yet.
Use Server.MapPath:
Server.MapPath("~/_templates/myFile.html")
or HttpServerUtility.MapPath:
HttpServerUtility.MapPath("~/_templates/myFile.html")
I'm writing a C# application on Linux, and I'd like to store the applications .config files in the user's home directory, i.e.
If the application's name is Foo.exe
~user/.Foo/foo.exe.config
instead of looking for the .config file in the same directory as the assembly. Is this possible?
Sure. Look into Environment.SpecialFolder.
string appDataDir = Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.ApplicationData);
Remember to use Path.Combine(folder1, folder2) to combine paths in order to make your app cross platform compatible.
Alternatively you could just get the environment variable HOME:
string homeDir = System.Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("HOME");
I believe you can do:
Directory.getCurrentDirectory().
Here is it's resource:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.io.directory.getcurrentdirectory(v=vs.110).aspx
I have done an application in c# windows application. In this i created a project with name ACHWINAPP. I have written some code to get the path that i required as follows
strFilePath = Directory.GetCurrentDirectory();
strFilePath = Directory.GetParent(strFilePath).ToString();
strFilePath = Directory.GetParent(strFilePath).ToString();
strFilePath = strFilePath + "\\ACH\\";
But when i create a setup for the project and installed in a direcotry namely some F:\ i am getting the error ACH as not found .
What i need is when user clicks on save i would like to save the file in the directory where he installed my setup file with the folder name ACH
Any Idea please..
Do you mean:
Application.StartupPath
Might not be what you want... but its the folder from which your executable is located
Link: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.windows.forms.application.startuppath.aspx
This is a relatively simple bit of code:
string currentPath = Directory.GetCurrentDirectory();
if (!Directory.Exists(Path.Combine(currentPath, "ACH")))
Directory.CreateDirectory(Path.Combine(currentPath, "ACH"));
//at this point your folder should exist
of course there can be a bunch of reasons why you can fail to create the folder, including insufficient privileges to do so. So you should also practice safe coding and catch exceptions when dealing with the file system.
It's hard to understand exactly what you want. Maybe use the answers to this question to load files next to the currently running application?
Otherwise, either trace out using Console.WriteLine() (or if you're using Visual Studio, add a Breakpoint) to find out the initial value of strFilePath. It's probably not what you expect.
Rather than 'adding' strings together, use Path.Combine(path1, path2) to create your path:
strFilePath = Path.Combine(strFilePath, "ACH");
I included a text file as output in a WCF set up project.
The text file is correctly located in the same folder with the dll, exe, and config file after the project is installed (C:\Program Files\KLTesting\KLTestApp).
However when the program tries to read it, it looks under "C:\Windows\system32", what's the correct way to find & read it?
I have
string a = Directory.GetCurrentDirectory();
a += "/R0303.txt";
string content = File.ReadAllText(a);
Thanks.
You should use AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory or AppDomain.CurrentDomain.SetupInformation.ApplicationBase instead, to get the Directory of your .exe file.
First you should not call Directory.GetCurrentDirectory() and concatenate with the file name. The service is running within a web server like IIS or some other type of container, so GetCurrentDirectory will not give you what you are thinking as you found out. (On a quick tangent, as a recommendation in the future if you want to do path combining you should use Path.Combine method as it will handle all the corner cases and be cross platform.)
There are a few ways to do this:
Assembly myAssembly = Assembly.GetAssembly(SomeTypeInAssm.GetType());
string fullFileName = Path.Combine(myAssembly.Location, "MyFile.txt");
The fullFileName should be what you are looking for. Make sure you use a type that is actually in an assembly located and referenced from the directory in question. However be aware because this file in your question in the Program Files area this is a secure area on Vista and higher OS's and you may not have access to do anything but read the file.
Also you could have the installer of the application place in the registry the install path. Then your service if on the same box can pull this information.
Also you could make sure the file you want to load is within the web server environment that is accessable to the WCF service in question.