How do I add a file to a exe - c#

I have a program that plays a sound but if I run it on a different computer it says that the file isn't found how do I attach the file onto the exe so when someone plays the exe it will still be able to play?

If you are wanting to embed your wave file into your program, go to your Project Properties --> Resources --> Select Audio as the type then select Add Resource and select your Audio File. This will add the Audio File to your Resources Directory. Once you have done this you can right click on the File in the Resources folder and select Properties and change the Build Action to Embedded Resource.
To access the file you would do something like this:
System.Media.SoundPlayer sp = new System.Media.SoundPlayer(Properties.Resources.tada);
sp.Play();

When Packaging your project files create a folder inside your project folder to hold your content data (text - pictures - videos - sound .. etc) and then supply your code with the relative path of your target file rather than the absolute path .
for example : instead of
string path = "c:\Projects\ProjectFolder\FileName";
do it like that :
string currentDir = AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory;
string fullPath = currentDir + "ContentFolder/FileName.mp3(or whatever)";
Edit :
AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory
Will be the application root directory, not the bin subfolder - which is probably what you usually want. In a client app, it will be the directory containing the main executable.

You can go the properties of the file, and under Copy to output Directory select, copy if newer
You can package the EXE with your c# program when you are ready to release it with an installer

If you cannot change the source code,I suggest
http://m.instructables.com/id/How-to-create-portable-app/?ALLSTEPS
It is about creating new exe archive containing old exe+new files you want to merge. When you call that new exe, it runs your old exe, but also contain your music files You can follow step4 and 5
Put your exe and music files into the same folder and compress them through that method

Related

How to create text file in .NET project folder, not in bin/Debug folder where is by default

I have a very simple .NET console application in Visual Studio. I am trying to write some words into a text file.
using (StreamWriter file = File.AppendText("log1.txt"))
{
file.WriteLine("Hello from the text file");
}
If the file does not exist, the application creates it in the autogenerated folder bin/Debug.
Is there a way to create this file in the project's directory, where I have .csproj file?
And more important, in real-world applications, when you work with files, you keep them in bin/Debug? That's why .NET creates them there firstly?
Is there a way to create this file in the project's directory, where I have .csproj file?
Yes, but this can only be done while you are working on your project. Once you are done developing it and try to publish it you won't have access to the location where you have .csproj file, because after publishing you can install it on any PC and it wont have the project you are working on.
And more important, in real-world applications, when you work with files, you keep them in bin/Debug?
No, I assume by real-world applications in your context you mean a published project '.exe' that you can run on any PC. Windows provides you three Data folders that you should use when writing your program so that it works smoothly after publishing:
User Data
Roaming User Data
All User Data
You can acess the above folders in .NET application using the Environment.SpecialFolder:
Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.LocalApplicationData)
Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.ApplicationData)
Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.CommonApplicationData)
As per your given code, try this :
var fileName = Path.Combine(Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.ApplicationData),
"log1.txt");
using (StreamWriter file = File.AppendText(fileName))
{
file.WriteLine("Hello from the text file");
}
This way you will be able to publish your program and it will still work smoothly without hard-coding the path as you were doing previously.
That's why .NET creates them there firstly?
If you don't specify a complete path, and just the file name .NET looks into the working directory of the executable, which in this case is bin/Debug
Is there a way to create this file in the project's directory, where I have .csproj file?
Yes. As explained here (second answer) you can use the post-build event to write down the value of $(ProjectDir) in a text file (using command echo $(ProjectDir) > ..\..\projectdir.txt). This macro contains the directory of your .csproj. This command will create the file projectdir.txt with your project directory after a build process so you read this file contents in your code and use what is inside it to pass to File.AppendText as the base directory to create your file log1.txt.
And more important, in real-world applications, when you work with files, you keep them in bin/Debug? That's why .NET creates them there firstly?
That depends on what you want to do. In your case the code creates the file at bin/Debug because that is where your executable are being executed. When you omit the full path to File.AppendText and just pass "log1.txt" as argument, it will create the file in the same folder as the executable are at. If you want a different folder you should specify the folder here (e.g. File.AppendText("C:/log1.txt") will create the file at C:/.
You can create the text file in the root of your project and use copy always to have them in the same place as your executable. If this is just a readonly text file then it's OK because windows doesn't allow you to modify the files reside in Programs folder in OS drive.
If you want your code to modify these text file then you need to put them in appdata folder. In real world example I did this on many project. All the database work my winforms, WPF application need goes in AppData folder.

Finding a specific file path when two files have the same name in different locations in C#

I'm trying to load and save an xml file called Modules.xml in my code. I have currently got the file path hardcoded as shown below. I am trying to get the file path within my code without it being hardcoded.
I have tried using Path.GetDirectoryName and new FileInfo("Modules.xml").Directory.FullName. However, both of these target the file in my debug folder, when the file I need is in the main solution folder.
Is there a way to target the file in my main solution folder instead of my debug folder? (both files are called Modules.xml)
doc.Save("C:\\Users\\Matthew\\Desktop\\Year4\\Object Oriented\\Project1\\Project1\\Modules.xml");
Both file locations are shown below:
C:\Users\Matthew\Desktop\Year4\Object Oriented\Project1\Project1\Modules.xml
^^^this is the file path I need for my code^^^
C:\Users\Matthew\Desktop\Year4\Object Oriented\Project1\Project1\bin\Debug\Modules.xml
The best approach here would be to use a configuration file, e.g. app.config, for storing such a string. Then you can change file path without recompiling the code, and your file can be stored in any location accessible by application.
If you really want to access your file the way you explained, AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory will provide you with the bin/Debug location in runtime. Then you can find a relative path from there like:
Path.Combine(AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory, #"..\..\", fileName);
where fileName is "Modules.xml" for example.
I have tried using Path.GetDirectoryName and new
FileInfo("Modules.xml").Directory.FullName. However, both of these
target the file in my debug folder, when the file I need is in the
main solution folder.
That's because bin\Debug is your working directory when you start and run the project. To change that, you can set the working directory environment variable to point to your solution directory (instead of bin\debug|release) which I wouldn't recommend that. Because when you finally endup with development, and release the application, there wouldn't be any solution directory that holds your XML file. What I can suggest is to copy your XML file to the output folder. Either you are in development (debug) or production (release) mode, the XML always going to be copied to final directory. And you can access the working directory with something like AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory. To enabling copy XML to output directory, right-click on it, choose Properties, set Build Action to None, and set Copy to Output Directory to Copy Always or Copy if newer. You're good to go now.

Unity3D loading resources after build

I have many sets of images (PNG) that are placed in different subfolders inside the Resources folder on the Assets of the project. When working on the editor I'm able to load the images from the different subfolders without a problem, by just simply use the Resources.Load() command and providing the path to the specific image that I'm trying to load, such as:
firstLeftCC = Resources.Load("Case2/Left/CC/IMG-0004-00001", typeof(Texture2D)) as Texture2D;
In this example the image "IMG-0004-00001" is placed in the CC folder, and the CC folder is inside the Left folder, and the Left folder is inside the Case2 folder, and finally the Case2 folder is in the Resources Folder.
But after building the project, for a Windows application, when I run the .exe file it doesn't load any of those images. After some research, it seems that the problem is related with the presence of the subfolders inside the Resources, since the path given to the Resources.Load() function to load the image doesn't exist in the build.
I would like to know if anyone knows a solution for this problem, or if it is possible to load the images from a given folder instead of trying to load them from the Resources folder.
Thanks in advance for the help.
Optional method of loading your PNG file during run time.
You can leave the Case2 in the Asset Folder during development. After you build for Windows, go to folder the exe built file is. Let's assume it is called Game.exe. There will be a folder called Game_Data in the-same directory the Game.exe executable file is.
Copy the Case2 folder to the Game_Data folder.
It should now look like this .... Game_Data/Case2/Left/CC/IMG-0004-00001.PNG
Now with code below, you can easily read your png files with the code below:
Texture2D firstLeftCC = null;
byte[] imageBytes;
string imagePath = Application.dataPath + "/Case2/Left/CC/IMG-0004-00001.PNG";
if (File.Exists(imagePath))
{
Debug.Log("Exist");
imageBytes = File.ReadAllBytes(imagePath);
firstLeftCC = new Texture2D(10, 10);
firstLeftCC.LoadImage(imageBytes);
}
Now you can freely use firstLeftCC as a Texture2D
Note: Unity creates .meta file/folder for every file/folder in the Assets directory. When when you copy the directory,IMG-0004-00001.PNG will have another file called IMG-0004-00001.PNG.meta. You should either NOT place your Case2 folder in the Assets folder during development or you will have to delete these yourself.
Include using System.IO;
Alternatively to Resources.Load, you can load images from a given folder using the WWW class. To do this the URL must use the file:// protocol and contains the path to the files according to your OS.
http://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/WWW.html
http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/517414/how-to-use-www-to-load-local-files.html

open file from folder in visual studio 2012

I had a folder on my desktop with files in it. I copied that into the folder of my solution and in the solution explorer I referenced that folder into the solution. However, Im not able to open files in that folder with a relative path.
The relative path from the cs-file would be "../FolderIAdded/blabla" as seen in the solution explorer. But in the windows explorer, the path is differen of course:
Solutionfolder
- SolutionFolder.sln
- Solutionfolder.v11.suo
- SolutionFolder
-- bin
-- obj
-- Properties
-- TheFolderIAdded
-- App.config
-- Form1.cs
-- etc.
Here, it would be "FolderIAdded/blabla"
Where do I have to put that folder?
My goal: I want to be able to open files from that folder in my c#-code with a relative path.
You're assuming that your program runs in the directory where your source code is located. That's not the case. Depending on your configuration, your program will execute from a directory inside Solutionfolder\bin.
One possible solution is to copy the file(s) to the output directory when you build your project.
Another alternative is to embed the files into your application's assembly at compile time, although this precludes editing of them after deployment. To do that, set Build Action to 'Embedded Resource', then you can access them using the GetManifestResourceStream method of the Assembly class. The filename you need to give it will be derived from the path within the project structure, so in your example it would be "TheFolderIAdded.Filename.ext".
Yes, that's a dot, not a backslash.
Assuming the files are embedded in the same assembly the code that wants to read them is in, the code will look something like
var assembly = Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly();
using (var stream =
assembly.GetManifestResourceStream("TheFolderIAdded.Filename.ext"))
using (var reader = new StreamReader(stream)) {
string fileContents = reader.ReadToEnd();
}
I don't think it's a good idea to write relative path from .cs file. Better build the path base on where the application is executed:
One example, there are plenty other on the web: How can I get the application's path in a .NET console application?
(Your application is not running in the solution's root folder but where the .exe file is locatated. For example when you debug a desktop application, it runs typically from [solution folder]/bin/debug/ )
Then make sure the file you want to open property Copy to Output Directory is set to Copy Always or Copy if newer. (Right click on the file in your Solution Explorer and click on "Properties" to be sure to access it.)

How to get program file location?

In my c# windows project i create a installer file.I add some image into program file folder. So i want to locate program file folder and get the image.
Anybody know how to locate that?
You can use Application.ExecutablePath property
Gets the path for the executable file that started the application,
including the executable name.
i do this like, just make a folder call it Resources and add the image files in it and retrieve it like this and finally add the Resources folder while making setup. I found this easy.
Image imageNormal = Image.FromFile("Resources\\button_Image.png");
controlName.Image = imageNormal;
In case if you are looking for this
C# - How to get Program Files (x86) on Windows 64 bit and
How do get the path of Program Files regardless of the architecture of the target machine
You can use Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly():
var location = System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location;
It's very Easy , Try the following code AppDomain.CurrentDomain .BaseDirectory
You can try this code to get iamges
Image.FormFile("Imagename.jpeg" )
this code itself located the application direcotry for example if you write
Image.FromFile("Imagename.jpeg") then it will retrive images in bin folder,

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