Develop Reference

Get image file path from resources

I have an image file day.jpg in Resources folder and I want to access it in the code as string path not as byte[] img
Here's what I have tried.
string dayWallpaper = Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location + #"..\..\Resources\day.jpg";
// Didn't found it
string dayWallpaper = Resource.day;
// Outputs byte[] and gives me an error
Then I tried to convert the byte[] to String didn't work as well
static byte[] SliceMe(byte[]? source, int pos)
{
byte[]? destfoo = new byte[source.Length - pos];
Array.Copy(source, pos, destfoo, 0, destfoo.Length);
return destfoo;
}
static string ByteToPath(path)
{
String file = Encoding.Unicode.GetString(SliceMe(path, 24)).TrimEnd("\0".ToCharArray());
return file
}
Outputs black screen
Later I search for the file
if (File.Exists(dayWallpaper))
{
do stuff
}
else
{
Console.WriteLine("File does not exists");
}
And gives me the else statement.

In the answer you posted to your question, the fact that your relative path works is an "accident" that would fail on any other device deploying your app because without the existence of the source code project the path doesn't exist. One good option is to mark the day.jpg file as Copy to Output Directory at which point most installer bundlers will pick it up and deploy it in your setup.exe, msi etc. If you are specifically using the Visual Studio IDE, you would do it like this:
Now, at runtime, to acquire the path to the copied file:
var srce = Path.Combine(AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory, "Resources", "day.jpg");
However, there is more work to be done, because you state that you "want to store the image in a folder in the executable and the user could add more images later on." The present location of the file is not suitable for that purpose, so I would recommend the additional step of creating an AppData entry for the user to store their created content.
// Obtain a folder that "the user could add to later on".
var appData =
Path.Combine(
Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.LocalApplicationData),
typeof(Program).Assembly.GetName().Name
);
Directory.CreateDirectory(appData);
Since you mention wanting to store the day.jpg image in that folder, go ahead and copy it to the AppData location (if not already there from a previous run of your app).
var dest = Path.Combine(appData, "day.jpg");
// Copy the image (if it's not there already) into folder that the user can add to.
if (!File.Exists(dest))
{
File.Copy(
sourceFileName: srce,
destFileName: dest
);
}
Alternatively, you could set the BuildAction to EmbeddedResource and manipulate the file as a byte stream and achieve the same end result.

I managed to do it this way
string resourcePath = Path.GetFullPath(Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location + #"\..\..\..\..\Resources");
string dayWallpaper = resourcePath + #"\day.jpg";

System.IO.IOException: Cannot create a file when that file already exists. Even after deleting the existing file

Using .NET Core 3.1 and C#, I'm trying to move a directory (including all subdirectories and files) to another directory. The destination directory may contain folders and files that already exist with the same name as the source directory, for example "source/folder/file.txt" may already exist in "destination/folder/file.txt" but I would like to overwrite everything in the destination directory.
The error I am getting is "System.IO.IOException: Cannot create a file when that file already exists.", however I am deleting the file that already exists in the destination before moving the file from the source (File.Delete before File.Move), so I don't understand why I am getting this error. Also to add, I am not able to reproduce this error 100% of the time for some reason.
This is the code I am using to move a directory (lines 137 - 155):
public static void MoveDirectory(string source, string target)
{
var sourcePath = source.TrimEnd('\\', ' ');
var targetPath = target.TrimEnd('\\', ' ');
var files = Directory.EnumerateFiles(sourcePath, "*", SearchOption.AllDirectories)
.GroupBy(s => Path.GetDirectoryName(s));
foreach (var folder in files)
{
var targetFolder = folder.Key.Replace(sourcePath, targetPath);
Directory.CreateDirectory(targetFolder);
foreach (var file in folder)
{
var targetFile = Path.Combine(targetFolder, Path.GetFileName(file));
if (File.Exists(targetFile)) File.Delete(targetFile);
File.Move(file, targetFile);
}
}
Directory.Delete(source, true);
}
This is the stack trace of my error:
Description: The process was terminated due to an unhandled exception.
Exception Info: System.IO.IOException: Cannot create a file when that file already exists.
at System.IO.FileSystem.MoveFile(String sourceFullPath, String destFullPath, Boolean overwrite)
at Module_Installer.Classes.Bitbucket.MoveDirectory(String source, String target) in F:\git\module-installer\module-installer\Module Installer\Classes\Bitbucket.cs:line 147
at Module_Installer.Classes.Bitbucket.DownloadModuleFiles(Module module, String username, String password, String workspace, String repository, String commitHash, String versionNumber, String downloadDirectory, String installDirectory) in F:\git\module-installer\module-installer\Module Installer\Classes\Bitbucket.cs:line 113
at Module_Installer.Classes.OvernightInstall.ProcessInstalledModule(TenantModule tenantModule, Boolean skipBackup) in F:\git\module-installer\module-installer\Module Installer\Classes\OvernightInstall.cs:line 393
at Module_Installer.Classes.OvernightInstall.Run(Boolean skipBackup) in F:\git\module-installer\module-installer\Module Installer\Classes\OvernightInstall.cs:line 75
at Module_Installer.Program.Main(String[] args) in F:\git\module-installer\module-installer\Module Installer\Program.cs:line 40
This error is happening when I am running the application via Windows Task Scheduler, which I have set to run at 03:30am every day, I have specified that the task should "Start In" the same folder as where the EXE is located.
Any suggestions would be appreciated, thanks!

Instead of deleting existing files in the target directory try to overwrite them using File.Move(file, targetFile, overwrite: true).
By the way there is an MSDN example on how to copy directories. It's not exactly your use case, but could be helpful anyway.

C# File.Move creates an empty file and IO exception

My code processes a video file (using ffmpeg) and creates different qualities (360p, 480p, etc) and formats (mp4 and HLS) of that. After creating these files, I move all of them to another drive (a network location).
my code looks Like this:
var files = Directory.GetFiles(srcFolder);
string filename, destFile = string.Empty, srcFile = string.Empty;
try
{
for (int i = 0; i < files.Length; i++)
{
srcFile = files[i];
filename = Path.GetFileName(srcFile);
destFile = Path.Combine(destFolder, filename);
File.Move(srcFile, destFile);
}
}
catch
{
_logger.LogError("Error in moving file. srcFile: {0}, destFile: {1}", destFile, srcFile);
throw;
}
This process works fine most of the time, but for some files, I get an IO exception every time I run this process.
System.IO.IOException: The file exists. at System.IO.FileSystem.MoveFile(String sourceFullPath, String destFullPath, Boolean overwrite)
I made sure that destFolder does not exist before, nor did the destFile.
After logging the error and finding the path of source and target files, I downloaded both of them. The source file is a .ts file with a size of 1,048 KB, and the target file is an empty file with the same name (0KB).
This error happened multiple times with the same video, so I assume that it has something to do with the file itself. But I cannot figure it out.

An unhandled exception of type 'System.OutOfMemoryException' occurred in mscorlib.dll in LINQ Search

Using this article from MSDN, I'm trying to search through files in a directory. The problem is, every time I execute the program, I get:
"An unhandled exception of type 'System.OutOfMemoryException' occurred in mscorlib.dll".
I have tried to some other options like StreamReader, but I can't get it to work. These files are HUGE. Some of them range in upwards to 1.5-2GB each and there could be 5 or more files per day.
This code fails:
private static string GetFileText(string name)
{
var fileContents = string.Empty;
// If the file has been deleted since we took
// the snapshot, ignore it and return the empty string.
if (File.Exists(name))
{
fileContents = File.ReadAllText(name);
}
return fileContents;
}
Any ideas what could be happening or how to make it read without memory errors?
Entire code (in case you don't want to open the MSDN article)
class QueryContents {
public static void Main()
{
// Modify this path as necessary.
string startFolder = #"c:\program files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\";
// Take a snapshot of the file system.
System.IO.DirectoryInfo dir = new System.IO.DirectoryInfo(startFolder);
// This method assumes that the application has discovery permissions
// for all folders under the specified path.
IEnumerable<System.IO.FileInfo> fileList = dir.GetFiles("*.*", System.IO.SearchOption.AllDirectories);
string searchTerm = #"Visual Studio";
// Search the contents of each file.
// A regular expression created with the RegEx class
// could be used instead of the Contains method.
// queryMatchingFiles is an IEnumerable<string>.
var queryMatchingFiles =
from file in fileList
where file.Extension == ".htm"
let fileText = GetFileText(file.FullName)
where fileText.Contains(searchTerm)
select file.FullName;
// Execute the query.
Console.WriteLine("The term \"{0}\" was found in:", searchTerm);
foreach (string filename in queryMatchingFiles)
{
Console.WriteLine(filename);
}
// Keep the console window open in debug mode.
Console.WriteLine("Press any key to exit");
Console.ReadKey();
}
// Read the contents of the file.
static string GetFileText(string name)
{
string fileContents = String.Empty;
// If the file has been deleted since we took
// the snapshot, ignore it and return the empty string.
if (System.IO.File.Exists(name))
{
fileContents = System.IO.File.ReadAllText(name);
}
return fileContents;
}
}

The problem you're having is based on trying to load multiple gigabytes of text at the same time. If they're text files, you can stream them and just compare one line at a time.
var queryMatchingFiles =
from file in fileList
where file.Extension == ".htm"
let fileLines = File.ReadLines(file.FullName) // lazy IEnumerable<string>
where fileLines.Any(line => line.Contains(searchTerm))
select file.FullName;

I would suggest that you are getting an out of memory error because the way the query is written I believe that you will need to load the entire text of every file into memory and none of the objects can be released until the entire file set has been loaded. Could you not check for the search term in the GetFileText function and then just return a true or false?
If you did that the file text at least falls out of scope at the end of the function and the GC can recover the memory. It would actually be better to rewrite as a streaming function if you are dealing with large files/amounts then you could exit your reading early if you come across the search term and you wouldn't need the entire file in memory all the time.
Previous question on finding a term in an HTML file using a stream

File.Replace throwing exception if FileToDelete resides in a different drive

I am not sure if this is the reason why its throwing error. But for me the test where I perform the File.Replace with files residing in different directories failed. Just want to know if this is the case with others too.
[TestMethod]
public void TestFileReplaceDifferentDirectory()
{
string FileToReplace = #"c:\tools\file2.txt";
string FileToDelete = #"D:\DropFolder\file0.txt";
string strToWrite;
using (var wtr = File.CreateText(FileToDelete))
{
long ticks = DateTime.Now.Ticks;
strToWrite = string.Join(",", ticks, ticks, ticks);
wtr.WriteLine(strToWrite);
wtr.Flush();
wtr.Close();
}
string BackupFileName = Path.Combine(
Path.GetDirectoryName(FileToReplace),
string.Format("{0}_{1}{2}",
Path.GetFileNameWithoutExtension(FileToReplace),
DateTime.Now.Ticks,
Path.GetExtension(FileToReplace))
);
File.Replace(FileToDelete, FileToReplace, BackupFileName, false);
using (StreamReader rdr = new StreamReader(FileToReplace))
{
string line = rdr.ReadLine();
Assert.AreEqual(strToWrite, line);
}
}
[TestMethod]
public void TestFileReplaceSameDirectory()
{
string FileToReplace = #"c:\tools\file2.txt";
string FileToDelete = #"c:\tools\file0.txt";
string strToWrite;
using (var wtr = File.CreateText(FileToDelete))
{
long ticks = DateTime.Now.Ticks;
strToWrite = string.Join(",", ticks, ticks, ticks);
wtr.WriteLine(strToWrite);
wtr.Flush();
wtr.Close();
}
string BackupFileName = Path.Combine(
Path.GetDirectoryName(FileToReplace),
string.Format("{0}_{1}{2}",
Path.GetFileNameWithoutExtension(FileToReplace),
DateTime.Now.Ticks,
Path.GetExtension(FileToReplace))
);
File.Replace(FileToDelete, FileToReplace, BackupFileName, false);
using (StreamReader rdr = new StreamReader(FileToReplace))
{
string line = rdr.ReadLine();
Assert.AreEqual(strToWrite, line);
}
}
I was trying to write to a temporary file (using Path.GetTempFileName()) and replace a file in D:\DropFolder. It wasn't happening; it threw an System.IO.Exception
So does this mean my only option is to create a kind of temporary file in the same directory as that of FileToReplace and carry out this task?

This is by design. The point of using File.Replace() is to be able to replace a file that's locked by another process. Very important if you have just one shot at saving precious data, common at machine shutdown or unexpected program termination. Needless to say, that does takes a trick or two since Windows is adamant about stopping you from overwriting a locked file.
It is possible at all because the operating system only puts a lock on the file data but not on the directory entry for a file. In other words, it is valid to rename the file, even though it is locked. The underlying system call is the same as File.Move().
Which operates two distinct ways, depending on the destFileName. If the destination path is on the same drive, the file system merely has to move the directory entry. Very fast and trouble-free. But that cannot work if it is not on the same drive, that requires moving the file data as well. Which is of course slow and not possible at all in a scenario where the file data is locked.
It is therefore imperative that the destinationBackupFileName argument you pass to File.Replace() is a path that's on the same drive as sourceFileName. Not doing this causes the exception when the move fails. Not otherwise hard to do in general, boilerplate is to make the backup filename simply the same as the source filename with, say, ".bak" appended to the path.