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 get a file full path in c# with Path.GetFullPath

I am trying to get the full path a file by its name only.
I have tried to use :
string fullPath = Path.GetFullPath("excelTest");
but it returns me an incorrect path (something with my project path).
I have read somewhere here a comment which says to do the following:
var dir = Environment.SpecialFolder.ProgramFilesX86;
var path = Path.Combine(dir.ToString(), "excelTest.csv");
but I do not know where the file is saved , therefore I do not know its environment.
can someone help me how to get the full path of a file only by its name?

The first snippet (with Path.GetFullPath) does exactly what you want. It returns something with your project path because the program EXE file is located in the project\Bin\Debug path, which is therefore the "current directory".
If you want to search for a file on a drive, you can use Directory.GetFiles, which will recursively search for a file in a directory given a name pattern.
This returns all xml-files recursively :
var allFiles = Directory.GetFiles(path, "*.xml", SearchOption.AllDirectories);
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms143316%28v=vs.100%29.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms143448.aspx#Y252
https://stackoverflow.com/a/9830162/2196124

I guess you're trying to find file (like in windows search), right ?
I'd look into this question - you will find all files that has that string in their filename, and from there you can return full filepath.
var fileList = new DirectoryInfo(#"c:\").GetFiles("*excelTest*", SearchOption.AllDirectories);
And then just use foreach to do you manipulations, e.g.
foreach(string file in fileList)
{
// MessageBox.Show(file);
}

What you're looking for is Directory.GetFiles(), you can read up on it here. The gist of it is, you'll pass in the file path and the file name, and you'll get a string array back. In this instance, you can assume top level with C:\. It should be noted, that if nothing is found, the string array will be empty.

You have passed a relative file name to Path.GetFullPath. Microsoft documentation states:
If path is a relative path, GetFullPath returns a fully qualified path that can be based on the current drive and current directory. The current drive and current directory can change at any time as an application executes. As a result, the path returned by this overload cannot be determined in advance.
You cannot get the same full path name from a relative path unless your current directory is the same each time you invoke the function.

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

Get File From an Assembly

I want to read a file path from the following structure
The Structure is like : AssemblyName -> MyFiles (Folder) -> Text.txt
Here I want to get the path of the Text.txt. Please help

I think what you're looking for is a file embedded in the assembly. Check out this question. The first answer explains how to set up an embedded file, as well as how to get it from code.

You can do
string assemblyPath = Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location;
string assemblyDirectory = Path.GetDirectoryName(assemblyPath);
string textPath = Path.Combine(assemblyDirectory, "MyFiles", "Test.txt");
string text = File.ReadAllText(textPath);
...just to split it up some...but you could write it all in one line needless to say...
alternatively, if your Environment.CurrentDirectory is already set to the directory of your executing assembly's location, you could just do
File.ReadAllText(Path.Combine("MyFiles", "Text.txt"));

Jeff has covered how you get the path, wrt your comment on his answer is the file you want to open actually included in your project output?
Under the properties pane for the relevant file look at the Copy to Output Directory option - it generally defaults to Do not copy. You will want to set it to Copy Always or Copy if Newer if you want to include a file in the output directory with your compiled program.
As a general note you should always wrap any IO in an appropriate try catch block or use the static File.Exists(path) method to check whether a file exists

Managing absolute path and full path

I've created a small program wich can read a .txt file.
This file contains a link to another file in this format new_file.txt
The goal is to return the path of the new file, so basically I'm doing this :
String newFileName = getFileName();
int index = oldFilePath.lastIndexOf('\\');
String path = oldFilePath.substring(0, index + 1);
String newFilePath = path + newFileName;
return newFilePath;
For example :
The first file I opened is : C:\a\b\c\oldFile.txt
In this file I found newFile.txt
So the new path will be : C:\a\b\c\newFile.txt
Nice, but what If I find something like this :
..\ or .\.\ or ...
Is there any way to automate this mess ?
Thanks

In C#/.Net you have the rather cool Path class.
You can use Path.GetFullPath( string pathname ) to resolve paths e.g. with \..\ etc in them.
Use Path.GetDirectory(), Path.GetFileName(), Path.GetFileNameWithoutExtension() & Path.GetExtension() to pull names apart and Path.Combine() to put them back together again.

You've tagged this as java as well as c#
In java look at FileNameUtils http://commons.apache.org/io/apidocs/org/apache/commons/io/FilenameUtils.html
The normalize method should help