I am writing a small command-line tool for my own daily tasks, and having problems reading from a XML file I have used for configuration. As per the examples, I use this code to load the XML file for Linq-to-XML.
XDocument doc = XDocument.Load("SearchSources.xml");
What I'm having problems with is when I "deploy" my app and XML to c:\windows\system32 for easy access, it won't work when I try to launch the file from the RUN prompt (e.g. run => TOOL -commands) because it's looking for the XML relative to wherever I launch the application.
I could obviously change the path to be the full path, e.g. c:\windows\system32\SearchSources.xml in the code, but that would prevent me from running it via F5 in Visual Studio.
EDIT: I am attempting to do this in code, rather than modifying configuration files when I deploy the app to other locations.
Use:
String filePath = System.IO.Path.GetDirectoryName(
System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location
) + #"\SearchSources.xml";
That will create a path to the file based on the directory of the executable.
Or using Path.Combine, as suggested:
String filePath = System.IO.Path.Combine(
System.IO.Path.GetDirectoryName(
System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location
),
"SearchSources.xml"
);
Try doing this:
var myAssembly = System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly();
var file = Path.GetDirectoryName(myAssembly.Location) + "\\SearchSources.xml";
This will get the location of the current executable, then build a path from the executable's folder and the name of the file you're after.
Sounds like you need a config file with the path to the xml file in it. At install time you could modify the path if required.
Create a Settings file in Visual Studio (Right click project, add-> new item -> Settings file ). There you can create a string with the path name to your file. In code, you can access it like this:
Properties.Settings.Default.MyString
This will create an xml file (app.config). I would then store the path in there, and use that in my app. That way, when you deploy it, you can just open the XML file in any text editor and edit the path.
Related
This is my first windows form application.
I need to work with folders that I have created in my project and I need to access the Data folder where I put .txt files.
I try :
string fileName = #"Data\TextFile1.txt";
string path = Path.Combine(AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory, fileName);
but i keep receiving this error :
impossible find part of path.
How can I combine the folder's path with file's name so when I release the project all works well?
This is what I do in an asp.net application:
Path.Combine(HttpRuntime.AppDomainAppPath, "Folder/FileName.txt");
Your data files need to be available in output folder along with you application .exe file. to do that:
Open properties of each file in Data folder.
Select Copy Always against Copy to output directory
Then build application
This will copy Data folder along with all files in Bin\Debug folder and will work with your existing code.
If I understand correctly, you are trying to read some file you have added to your solution in Visual Studio.
First, to have those files "deployed", click on them in the Solution Explorer, go to the Properties tool and have a look at the "Copy to Output Directory". Default is "Do not copy". Change that setting to "Copy always" or "Copy if newer". Now your files will be copied to the output directory when you build the solution.
Then, to get the current assembly path at runtime, have a look at:
Getting the path of the current assembly
string path = (new System.Uri(Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().CodeBase)).AbsolutePath;
from the assembly path, you can get the containing folder's path, then you can use Path.Combine() to get your desired file path.
in C# .NET you can easy use the Environment Properties when working with Forms.
If you want e.g. the Appdata Path do this:
string MyPath = Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.ApplicationData) + #"\" + MyFileName;
But please get sure that the File/Path Exists!
For this you can use File.Exists -Function:
if(File.Exists(MyPath))
{
//Do Something
}
(For File-Class you need the System.IO namespace!)
EDIT:
Example:
string MyPath = Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.ApplicationData) + #"\MyConfig.txt";
if(File.Exists(MyPath))
{
MessageBox.Show($"{MyPath} exists!");
}
Hope that helped ;)
I would not create any path inside the application if possible. The NET framework provides the application configuration file for this kind of problems. You should simply add this section to your configuration file (app.config when developing, then application.exe.config after compilation)
<configuration>
<appSettings>
<add key="mydatafolder" value="e:\whateverpathyoulike"></add>
</appSettings>
</configuration>
Then at runtime read that value from your code
string path = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["mydatafolder"];
path = Path.Combine(path, fileName);
This is easily modifiable both automatically or manually to adapt to any environment you find on the destination computers
I am creating an application in WPF.
In that I am using XML file to store some settings.
My app will run for every 10 sec. So it will use that XML file settings.
My issue is in My local system i am calling the XML file as D://Foldername/projectname/test.xml .
But after deployment it is storing in C://Programfiles/Projectname/test.xml .
So how to give a generic path so that it runs in all the client systems.
I am creating setup file to install in clients systems.
Please help me.
Open the project properties page.
Click on Settings tab.
Add a new item called "MyPath". Make it an Application Setting of type String and give it a sensible default path name as value.
Reference the value in code with Properties.Settings.Default.MyPath.
If you open the applications config there will be a setting called MyPath where you can override the path at runtime.
I suggest you to put the XML file in the same folder as your EXE file and then use Assembly to get its current path.
var cfgPath = Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location + ".config"
Update
it's better to name your config file the same with your exe file but with ".config" extension.
If you are really using ClickOnce, I hardly recommend you to create your own directory for data and configuration files:
private static string GetDataDir()
{
var dataDir = Path.Combine(Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.ApplicationData),
"YourApplicationName");
if (!Directory.Exists(dataDir))
Directory.CreateDirectory(dataDir);
return dataDir;
}
The problem with storing the data in the directory of the executable is, that it will be at a different location. While debugging, it will be in you \bin directory. When the application is deployed by ClickOnce, you gonna have a bad time. The installation directory for a ClickOnce application is created for every version. So if you EVER update your application at "customers", all their settings will be lost.
I've created an setup files for my winform. When I run this setup file, the application will be install into the location specified by the user. The installation will also copy some xml files into that location. Right after the user run the application, it will read some settings from the xml files.
What I want to know is, because the location of the xml file is flexible (user specified), how do we know which location to read? How do we specified in the winform coding that it should read from the installed location?
Have you looked at Application.ExecutablePath for the path where your exe was when it ran, so this would be the base directory of your install.
String startingdir = Path.GetDirectoryName(Application.ExecutablePath);
foreach(String Filename in Directory.GetFiles(startingdir,"*.xml")
{
// process
}
Are the XML files copied to the same location as your executable? In that case, you can use Application.ExecutablePath from your WinForms app to get the location of the executable, and from there create the path to your XML files.
I've tried this
reader = new XmlTextReader(Application.StartupPath + "\\MyFile.xml");
And it work fine!!
The way i would suggest is you create a step in your installer where the user can set the location of the file. Put that in the registry . And get your application to read it from registry
If the files are copied to the working folder of your exe, then you can address them with relative paths (no need for absolute paths).
Edit: Here's an example
XmlDocument document = new XmlDocument();
document.Load("filename.xml");
this piece of code will try to read the file filename.xml which is in the same folder that contains your exe file.
XmlDocument document = new XmlDocument();
document.Load("somefolder/filename.xml");
and this one will try to read the file filename.xml from the folder somefolder that is located in the folder that contains your exe
XmlReader reader = XmlReader.Create(#"E:\NewFolder\WindowsFormsApplication1\WindowsFormsApplication1\QuestionFile.xml")
In my application i have read a xml file which is location in a specific location in my pc but now i want to deploy my application now when i rum my exe and install in other pc i get error that read error of xml file so what should i do for that.
like that i have used to read the xml file.
I would really appreciate if someone helps me out!
thanks
You could include the XML in the same folder as your program. In the code, build up the string dynamically, using the following to get the name of the folder the program is currently executing from:
Path.GetDirectoryName(Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location);
All you need to do after that is append the name of your XML file with Path.Combine or appending to the string.
Edit:
(You'll need to include references to System.IO and System.Reflection).
You could create the string holding the path separately, then use that for creating your reader:
string xmlLocation = Path.Combine(Path.GetDirectoryName(Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location), "QuestionFile.xml");
XmlReader reader = XmlReader.Create(xmlLocation);
Remember if you're running this in debug in VS, this will point to your debug directory so make sure a copy of the XML file is in there.
Can you package the questions.xml with the EXE as embedded resource?
Well, I think you have two options:
1) include the xml inside your solution as an embedded resource, and read it using GetManifestResourceStream. Here's more info on how to do it.
2) Include it in the solution and set the file's Build Action to Content. Then in your MSI installer package you can include that project's "Content" output. This means the file will end up included as a separate physical file located in the application's installation path.
See Here for more details. Step 2 shows how to add different outputs.
I have a c# server application (WCF) and I have a file saved on that server and i want to access it relatively so every dev machine can work with it.
this is the file path.
C:\Users\ben\Documents\Visual Studio 2010\Projects\ myfile.xml
the project where i want to access the file from is in:
C:\Users\ben\Documents\Visual Studio 2010\Projects\ MyProject
what is the best way to access the myfile.xml (relatively)? from MyProject?
Well, when you run the project, your current directory will be something like:
C:\Users\ben\Documents\Visual Studio 2010\Projects\MyProject\MyProject\bin\Debug\
So you will probably want to do something else.
Include the file in the project and go to File Properties for the file. Select Copy Always for the Copy to Output Directory setting. The file will then be copied to the same directory as the EXE when compiling/building. That way you can access the file simply by its filename.
From your question , what is under stood is that you want to access your project location , without the executable file and folder . To do that try the following code :
string AppPath = System.Environment.CommandLine;
int pos = AppPath.IndexOf("bin");
AppPath = AppPath.Remove(pos);
AppPath += "myfile.xml";