Develop Reference

WCF Azure create PDF file in virtual directory with DevExpress

We have a wcf service that uses DevExpress XtraReports to generate a pdf file.
How this normally works is we have in the web.config the physical directory Example C:\PdfDocs\ that we specify as the path when executing the devexpress ExportToPdf function. This works fine on a normal virtual machine.
We are now busy moving to Microsoft Azure enviroment and I am having trouble getting this to work.
My Setup - The wcf service is created as a App Service. Unfortunately I am not at liberty to give names so lets assume the following:
App Service Name - testdocservice,
Url Azure gives - https://testdocservices.azurewebsites.net
What I have tried:
In Application settings, I have created a virtual directory. In the project itself I have created a folder that the virtual directory will point to.
The virtual path is https://testdocservices.azurewebsites.net/ItinDocs and the physical path is site\wwwroot\ItinDocuments
This is setup correctly as I have tested it by FTP test pdf in and then hit the following url: https://testdocservices.azurewebsites.net/ItinDocs/test.pdf
So in the wcf service I took a chance and set the location to render the pdf to "site\wwwroot\ItinDocuments" - This did not work.
The exception was as follows: Access to the path 'D:\Windows\system32\site\wwwroot\ItinDocuments\TestQuote21.pdf' is denied.
I then tried using Server.MapPath example:
QuoteV3 oQuote = new QuoteV3();
oQuote.DataSource = dSource;
oQuote.ExportToPdf(System.Web.HttpContext.Current.Server.MapPath($"~{ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["DocLocation"]}{fileName}"));
The DocLocation look like the following: site\wwwroot\ItinDocuments\
This also did not work. The following error is given:
'~https:/testdocservices.azurewebsites.net/ItinDocs/TestQuote21.pdf' is not a valid virtual path.
I thought the first character "~" could be a problem so I removed it and got the same error as above - 'https:/testdocservices.azurewebsites.net/ItinDocs/TravelQuote21.pdf' is not a valid virtual path.
I then noticed that the above errors only have one forward-slash after the https. At this point I am not sure if that could be causing the problem and then how to correct it as the Server.MapPath is generating that part.
In conclusion, I am not sure if I am even working in the right direction with the above approach. My knowledge around azure is still minimal.
Any help/assistance/solution would be greatly appreciated.
Many thanks.

This can be closed as I have instead setup azure storage and my pdfs are saving in a container instead.
Thanks.

WP8 copy SharedStorge file directly into IsolatedStorage

I am developing a Windows Phone 8 application but am having a lot of issues with file access permission exceptions hindering the approval of my application when ever I try accessing files in the "local" folder (this only happens after the application has been signed by the WP store, not when deployed from Visual Studio). To solve this I have moved all file operations to IsolatedStorage and this seems to have fixed the problems.
I only have one problem left though. My application needs to make use of the file extension system to open external files and this seems to involve the file first being copied to the local folder where after I can then manually copy it into IsolatedStorage. I have no problem in implementing this but it seems that a file access permission exception also occurs once the system tries to copy the external file into the local folder.
The only way I think this can be solved is if I can direct the system to directly copy into IsolatedStorage but I cannot figure how to do this or if it is even possible. It seems as if though the SharedStorageAccessManager can only copy into a StorageFolder instance but I have no idea how to create one that is directed into IsolatedStorage, any ideas?
PS. Do you think that the Microsoft system might be signing my application with some incompetent certificate or something because there is not a hint of trouble when I deploy the application from Visual Studio, it only happens when Microsoft tests it or when I install it from the store using the Beta submission method.
Below is a screenshot of the catched exception being displayed in a messagebox upon trying to open a file from an email:
EDIT:
Just to make it even clearer, I do NOT need assistance in figuring out the normal practice of using a deep link uri to copy an external file into my application directory. I need help in either copying it directly into isolatedstorage or resolving the file access exception.

Listening for a file launch
When your app is launched to handle a particular file type, a deep link URI is used to take the user to your app. Within the URI, the FileTypeAssociation string designates that the source of the URI is a file association and the fileToken parameter contains the file token.
For example, the following code shows a deep link URI from a file association.
/FileTypeAssociation?fileToken=89819279-4fe0-4531-9f57-d633f0949a19
Upon launch, map the incoming deep link URI to an app page that can handle the file
// Get the file token from the URI
// (This is easiest done from a UriMapper that you implement based on UriMapperBase)
// ...
// Get the file name.
string incomingFileName = SharedStorageAccessManager.GetSharedFileName(fileID);
// You will then use the file name you got to copy it into your local folder with
// See: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsphone/develop/windows.phone.storage.sharedaccess.sharedstorageaccessmanager.copysharedfileasync(v=vs.105).aspx
SharedStorageAccessManager.CopySharedFileAsync(...)
I've inline the information on how to do this from MSDN http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsphone/develop/jj206987(v=vs.105).aspx
Read that documentation and it should be clear how to use the APIs as well as how to setup your URI mapper.
Good luck :)

Ok I figured it out. The "install" directory is actually restricted access but for some reason the Visual Studio signing process leaves the app with enough permissions to access this folder. The correct procedure of determining a relative directory is not to use "Directory.GetCurrentDirectory()" but rather to use "ApplicationData.Current.LocalFolder". Hope this helps!

How to get path to file in winforms application

How can I get the path of a file on my computer or on the local area network.
I would to show a window that allows me to browse the file system when I click a button, and I want to select a file and get the path to the file. How can I do this?
P.S. I'm not looking to upload the file; I just want to get the path.

The web application is running on the server, and you don't have access to the client file system at all. Can you imagine how much of a vulnerability that would be? I know I don't want the sites I visit inspecting my file system...
EDIT: Question is for a WinForms application
For a WinForms application, you can use the OpenFileDialog, and extract the path with something like this:
If you're looking for the file path:
string path = OpenFileDialog1.FileName; //output = c:\folder\file.txt
If you're looking for the directory path:
string path = Path.GetDirectoryName(OpenFileDialog1.FileName); //output = c:\folder
In general, the System.IO.Path class has a lot of useful features for retrieving and manipulating path information.

To do this in VB.NET use the FolderBrowserDialog.

Due to security restrictions browsers include for user safety, you can't manipulate the client file system directly. You can only use to let them pick a file, and even then it only sends the filename, not the whole path.
The FileSystem API in HTML5 allows for file manipulation, but only within a sandbox for your site specifically, not browsing across the network or other files on the client system.
Instead, provide your users easy steps on how they should use My Computer (or whatever equivalent on other OS's) to navigate to the file and copy & paste the path into a simple text input box.

Have you taken a look at the Path class from System.IO ?

C# Get Full File Path

I have an ASP FileUpload control and I am uploading:
C:\Documents and Settings\abpa\Desktop\TTPublisher\apache-tomcat-6.0.26\webapps\ttpub\WEB-INF\classes\org\gtfs\tmp\GTFS_Rail\routes.txt
What is the C# code to grab this entire string using the code below:
var pathOfCsvFile = Server.MapPath(ImportRoutes.FileName);
var adapter = new GenericParsing.GenericParserAdapter(pathOfCsvFile);
DataTable data = adapter.GetDataTable();
I know that Server.MapPath needs to change.
UPDATE:
Using System.IO.Path.GetFullPath gave me the below output:
pathOfCsvFile = "C:\\Program Files\\Common Files\\Microsoft Shared\\DevServer\\10.0\\routes.txt"

You are mixing up client and server behavior, which is easy to do when you are testing locally. The issue you are having is that the FileUploadControl (and HTML file uploading in general) is specifically designed to not provide you with the full path to the file. That would be a privacy breach. What it is designed to give you is the binary data of the file that was uploaded itself. Specifically you should query the properties on FileUploadControl: FileBytes or FileContent.
Just to further clarify the issue, what would happen if the browser user was actually on a physically different machine from the web server (the usual case)? What good would the full path of the file on the client machine be to you on the server?

Server.MapPath will return the physical path to a file in or below the application root. If that path you list is outside the application root, Server.MapPath will not work.
You can map a virtual directory to a folder you want to use to hold file uploads, which you can then discover with Server.MapPath.

ASP.Net search subdirectory

How do I search a sub directory in my ASP.Net web site?
I know if this was a regular Winform project, I could easily get it by the following:
Environment.CurrentDirectory
or
System.IO.Directory.GetCurrentDirectory()
then
string[] directories = System.IO.Path.Combine(Environment.CurrentDirectory, "Portfolio")
How do I build the path to a subfolder called Portfolio in ASP.Net?
I'm having a problem building everything from the http://??????????/Portfolio. How do I find the ?????? part?
I tried the code above but got a completely different directory...
I don't want to hard code everything before that last subfolder because it will be different on another server.

Calling Directory.GetCurrentDirectory() can be misleading when calling it from an ASP.NET app. The best way to do get around this is to use Server.MapPath() instead, which will allow you to map a web folder to its location on disk.
So for example, running this code:
string path = Server.MapPath("~/Portfolio");
will set 'path' equal to the location of that folder on disk.
If you're running this code from outside the context of a Page or control class, you won't be able to access the Server object directly. In this case, your code would look like this:
string path = HttpContext.Current.Server.MapPath("~/Portfolio");

If I understand you right, you can just access it with:
"/portfolio"
The system will concatenate "/portfolio" to the url, if, for example it is "http://site.com" you will get "http://site.com/portfolio"
If you want the physical path, you can use
server.mappath("/portfolio")
and it will return the physical directory associated (for example E:\websites\site\portfolio")

the following piece of lines gets you to the 'bin' directory
Assembly asm = Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly();
String strAppHome = Path.GetDirectoryName(asm.CodeBase).Replace("file:\\", "");