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
Related
I see that there are some ways to get the application folder path:
Application.StartupPath
System.IO.Path.GetDirectoryName(
System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location)
AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory
System.IO.Directory.GetCurrentDirectory()
Environment.CurrentDirectory
System.IO.Path.GetDirectoryName(
System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().GetName().CodeBase)
System.IO.Path.GetDirectory(Application.ExecutablePath)
What is the best way depending on the situation?
AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory is probably the most useful for accessing files whose location is relative to the application install directory.
In an ASP.NET application, this will be the application root directory, not the bin subfolder - which is probably what you usually want. In a client application, it will be the directory containing the main executable.
In a VSTO 2005 application, it will be the directory containing the VSTO managed assemblies for your application, not, say, the path to the Excel executable.
The others may return different directories depending on your environment - for example see #Vimvq1987's answer.
CodeBase is the place where a file was found and can be a URL beginning with http://. In which case Location will probably be the assembly download cache. CodeBase is not guaranteed to be set for assemblies in the GAC.
UPDATE
These days (.NET Core, .NET Standard 1.3+ or .NET Framework 4.6+) it's better to use AppContext.BaseDirectory rather than AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory. Both are equivalent, but multiple AppDomains are no longer supported.
Application.StartupPathand 7. System.IO.Path.GetDirectoryName(Application.ExecutablePath) - Is only going to work for Windows Forms application
System.IO.Path.GetDirectoryName(
System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location)
Is going to give you something like: "C:\\Windows\\Microsoft.NET\\Framework\\v4.0.30319\\Temporary ASP.NET Files\\legal-services\\e84f415e\\96c98009\\assembly\\dl3\\42aaba80\\bcf9fd83_4b63d101" which is where the page that you are running is.
AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory for web application could be useful and will return something like "C:\\hg\\Services\\Services\\Services.Website\\" which is base directory and is quite useful.
System.IO.Directory.GetCurrentDirectory() and 5. Environment.CurrentDirectory
will get you location of where the process got fired from - so for web app running in debug mode from Visual Studio something like "C:\\Program Files (x86)\\IIS Express"
System.IO.Path.GetDirectoryName(
System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().GetName().CodeBase)
will get you location where .dll that is running the code is, for web app that could be "file:\\C:\\hg\\Services\\Services\\Services.Website\\bin"
Now in case of for example console app points 2-6 will be directory where .exe file is.
Hope this saves you some time.
Note that not all of these methods will return the same value. In some cases, they can return the same value, but be careful, their purposes are different:
Application.StartupPath
returns the StartupPath parameter (can be set when run the application)
System.IO.Directory.GetCurrentDirectory()
returns the current directory, which may or may not be the folder where the application is located. The same goes for Environment.CurrentDirectory. In case you are using this in a DLL file, it will return the path of where the process is running (this is especially true in ASP.NET).
For a web application, to get the current web application root directory, generally call by web page for the current incoming request:
HttpContext.Current.Server.MapPath();
System.Web.Hosting.HostingEnvironment.ApplicationPhysicalPath;
Above code description
I started a process from a Windows Service over the Win32 API in the session from the user which is actually logged in (in Task Manager session 1 not 0). In this was we can get to know, which variable is the best.
For all 7 cases from the question above, the following are the results:
Path1: C:\Program Files (x86)\MyProgram
Path2: C:\Program Files (x86)\MyProgram
Path3: C:\Program Files (x86)\MyProgram\
Path4: C:\Windows\system32
Path5: C:\Windows\system32
Path6: file:\C:\Program Files (x86)\MyProgram
Path7: C:\Program Files (x86)\MyProgram
Perhaps it's helpful for some of you, doing the same stuff, when you search the best variable for your case.
In my experience, the best way is a combination of these.
System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().GetName().CodeBase
Will give you the bin folder
Directory.GetCurrentDirectory()
Works fine on .Net Core but not .Net and will give you the root directory of the project
System.AppContext.BaseDirectory and AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory
Works fine in .Net but not .Net core and will give you the root directory of the project
In a class library that is supposed to target.Net and .Net core I check which framework is hosting the library and pick one or the other.
To get the path to .exe for simple desktop applications I use
Path.GetDirectoryName(Assembly.GetEntryAssembly().Location)
which returns path to .exe.
Also be aware that for several domains the .exe for default domain will be returned, or the .exe executed by first call of ExecuteAssembly(String) and that if the entry is unmanaged, the null will be returned.
Be careful with GetExecutingAssembly(), naming was confusing for me, as I have expected to get the .exe, but it returns the .dll or .exe, where the code is placed, so in case of GetExecutingAssembly() placed in library it returns the library.
I have used this one successfully
System.IO.Path.GetDirectoryName(Process.GetCurrentProcess().MainModule.FileName)
It works even inside linqpad.
Root directory:
DriveInfo cDrive = new DriveInfo(System.Environment.CurrentDirectory);
var driverPath = cDrive.RootDirectory;
If you know to get the root directory:
string rootPath = Path.GetPathRoot(Application.StartupPath)
this one System.IO.Path.GetDirectory(Application.ExecutablePath) changed to System.IO.Path.GetDirectoryName(Application.ExecutablePath)
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
What is the best method of getting the path the C# executable is running from?
I need to use it for temp folders etc and currently I'm using:
Path.GetDirectoryName(Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().GetName().CodeBase)
But I then need to do a:
.Replace("file:\\", string.Empty)
as this gives me a URI type path (i.e. has file:\ at the start) which is unusable with some other parts of my code.
Path.GetDirectoryName(Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location)
Not an accurate answer to your question, however I would suggest to have a look at:
Path.GetTempFileName()
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.io.path.gettempfilename.aspx
Try with Environment.CurrentDirectory
This returns the folder of your currently working directory.
For temp folders etc. you should NOT use the executing directory for security reasons...
MS has something built-in for this:
You can use ApplicationData (for roaming users) or LocalApplicationData (for non-roaming users) or CommonApplicationData (for non-user-related things) from Environment.SpecialFolder - anything (files+folders) you create within those folders is already setup with the needed permissions/rights for the user running you app - nobody else (except perhaps Administrator) can go there... to make it even more secure you could encrypt data you put there...
see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.environment.specialfolder.aspx
Try:
Application.StartupPath
It should return the path without the executable filename.
If the assembly has been shadow copied then Assembly.Location will point to the shadow copy of the dll.
If you want to know the location of the build output directory use Assembly.CodeBase, i.e.:
Path.GetDirectoryName(new Uri(Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().CodeBase).LocalPath)
Useful if you want to access other resources from the directory of the assembly for example when running test suite.
.NET Core 3.0 introduced IHostEnvironment.ContentRootPath.
.NET Core 2.1 introduced IHostingEnvironment.ContentRootPath (obsolete since Core 3.0).
Personally I find that these are what I generally need: the place where included content is located.
I can confirm that IHostEnvironment.ContentRootPath also returns the desired result when running as a unit test. (Tested with xUnit, but the test framework should not matter.)
For self-contained single file applications (available since .NET Core 3.0) you should use System.AppContext.BaseDirectory. The assembly location will be empty so you can't rely on it.
Example
using System.Reflection;
Console.WriteLine($"AppContext.BaseDirectory: {AppContext.BaseDirectory}");
Console.WriteLine($"Assembly.Location: {Path.GetDirectoryName(Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location)}");
Console.ReadLine();
Output (Not published):
AppContext.BaseDirectory: C:\[..]\bin\Debug\net6.0-windows\win-x64\
Assembly.Location: C:\[..]\bin\Debug\net6.0-windows\win-x64
Output (Published / Single File):
AppContext.BaseDirectory: C:\[..]\bin\Debug\net6.0-windows\win-x64\publish\
Assembly.Location:
string executableLocation = Path.GetDirectoryName(Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location);
string txtfile = Path.Combine(executableLocation, "example.txt");
I see that there are some ways to get the application folder path:
Application.StartupPath
System.IO.Path.GetDirectoryName(
System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location)
AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory
System.IO.Directory.GetCurrentDirectory()
Environment.CurrentDirectory
System.IO.Path.GetDirectoryName(
System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().GetName().CodeBase)
System.IO.Path.GetDirectory(Application.ExecutablePath)
What is the best way depending on the situation?
AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory is probably the most useful for accessing files whose location is relative to the application install directory.
In an ASP.NET application, this will be the application root directory, not the bin subfolder - which is probably what you usually want. In a client application, it will be the directory containing the main executable.
In a VSTO 2005 application, it will be the directory containing the VSTO managed assemblies for your application, not, say, the path to the Excel executable.
The others may return different directories depending on your environment - for example see #Vimvq1987's answer.
CodeBase is the place where a file was found and can be a URL beginning with http://. In which case Location will probably be the assembly download cache. CodeBase is not guaranteed to be set for assemblies in the GAC.
UPDATE
These days (.NET Core, .NET Standard 1.3+ or .NET Framework 4.6+) it's better to use AppContext.BaseDirectory rather than AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory. Both are equivalent, but multiple AppDomains are no longer supported.
Application.StartupPathand 7. System.IO.Path.GetDirectoryName(Application.ExecutablePath) - Is only going to work for Windows Forms application
System.IO.Path.GetDirectoryName(
System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location)
Is going to give you something like: "C:\\Windows\\Microsoft.NET\\Framework\\v4.0.30319\\Temporary ASP.NET Files\\legal-services\\e84f415e\\96c98009\\assembly\\dl3\\42aaba80\\bcf9fd83_4b63d101" which is where the page that you are running is.
AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory for web application could be useful and will return something like "C:\\hg\\Services\\Services\\Services.Website\\" which is base directory and is quite useful.
System.IO.Directory.GetCurrentDirectory() and 5. Environment.CurrentDirectory
will get you location of where the process got fired from - so for web app running in debug mode from Visual Studio something like "C:\\Program Files (x86)\\IIS Express"
System.IO.Path.GetDirectoryName(
System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().GetName().CodeBase)
will get you location where .dll that is running the code is, for web app that could be "file:\\C:\\hg\\Services\\Services\\Services.Website\\bin"
Now in case of for example console app points 2-6 will be directory where .exe file is.
Hope this saves you some time.
Note that not all of these methods will return the same value. In some cases, they can return the same value, but be careful, their purposes are different:
Application.StartupPath
returns the StartupPath parameter (can be set when run the application)
System.IO.Directory.GetCurrentDirectory()
returns the current directory, which may or may not be the folder where the application is located. The same goes for Environment.CurrentDirectory. In case you are using this in a DLL file, it will return the path of where the process is running (this is especially true in ASP.NET).
For a web application, to get the current web application root directory, generally call by web page for the current incoming request:
HttpContext.Current.Server.MapPath();
System.Web.Hosting.HostingEnvironment.ApplicationPhysicalPath;
Above code description
I started a process from a Windows Service over the Win32 API in the session from the user which is actually logged in (in Task Manager session 1 not 0). In this was we can get to know, which variable is the best.
For all 7 cases from the question above, the following are the results:
Path1: C:\Program Files (x86)\MyProgram
Path2: C:\Program Files (x86)\MyProgram
Path3: C:\Program Files (x86)\MyProgram\
Path4: C:\Windows\system32
Path5: C:\Windows\system32
Path6: file:\C:\Program Files (x86)\MyProgram
Path7: C:\Program Files (x86)\MyProgram
Perhaps it's helpful for some of you, doing the same stuff, when you search the best variable for your case.
In my experience, the best way is a combination of these.
System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().GetName().CodeBase
Will give you the bin folder
Directory.GetCurrentDirectory()
Works fine on .Net Core but not .Net and will give you the root directory of the project
System.AppContext.BaseDirectory and AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory
Works fine in .Net but not .Net core and will give you the root directory of the project
In a class library that is supposed to target.Net and .Net core I check which framework is hosting the library and pick one or the other.
To get the path to .exe for simple desktop applications I use
Path.GetDirectoryName(Assembly.GetEntryAssembly().Location)
which returns path to .exe.
Also be aware that for several domains the .exe for default domain will be returned, or the .exe executed by first call of ExecuteAssembly(String) and that if the entry is unmanaged, the null will be returned.
Be careful with GetExecutingAssembly(), naming was confusing for me, as I have expected to get the .exe, but it returns the .dll or .exe, where the code is placed, so in case of GetExecutingAssembly() placed in library it returns the library.
I have used this one successfully
System.IO.Path.GetDirectoryName(Process.GetCurrentProcess().MainModule.FileName)
It works even inside linqpad.
Root directory:
DriveInfo cDrive = new DriveInfo(System.Environment.CurrentDirectory);
var driverPath = cDrive.RootDirectory;
If you know to get the root directory:
string rootPath = Path.GetPathRoot(Application.StartupPath)
this one System.IO.Path.GetDirectory(Application.ExecutablePath) changed to System.IO.Path.GetDirectoryName(Application.ExecutablePath)
I have an application that contains a sub folder that contain xml file ,that is use as a database now i want take the path of the xml file at run time ,how can i achieve this in window application?
I know how it does in asp.net using Server.MapPath but i want this is same in windows application
please help
thanks in advance .
Use Aplication.ExecutablePath property when am XML document and executable are reside in the same directory.
I think the recommended way in Windows is to use the Application.StartupPath property.
And with Path.Combine you can have your xml file path Server.MapPath-style like this:
var appPath = Application.StartupPath;
var xmlPath = Path.Combine(appPath, "data/my_db.xml");
// xmlPath now points to app-relative data/my_db.xml file
...
A nuanced answer:
The best way to access data would be to put it in Application.CommonAppDataPath or Application.UserAppDataPath so that it does not depend on the application's installed path. However, there are many reasons why you might need to avoid this.
To answer your question:
If the application is a standard forms application deployed to the client's machine by an installer or XCopy deployment, then the path to the executable is Application.ExecutablePath
If the application is Click-Once deployed, then I would not recommend using the above since the app's path is obscured, shadow-copied and put in the sandbox. You can use ApplicationDeployment.IsNetworkDeployed to test for click-once deployment then ApplicationDeployment.CurrentDeployment.ActivationUri to get the URI that the application was launched from. Your app-relative file will be on that web server; you will always be able to download it.
of course in click-once deployent it would be better to tag the file as Data in which case it would be accessible through ApplicationDeployment.CurrentDeployment.DataDirectory
if the application is a web app, then the Application class is useless. In this case you should use Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location This works because currently executing assembly for a web app is almost always in the web app's /bin directory.
For a "portable" assembly where you don't have an installer, and for rare cases where you don't want to use the Application class, use Assembly.GetEntryAssembly().Location This works because it figures out what the entry point assembly is (your application) and uses that location. This is reliable because assemblies that your entry assembly load don't have to be in the same directory as the entry assembly.
You can get the directory of the currently executing assembly using
System.Runtime.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location
from there you can get to your subdirectory.