CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#relative-pathpath
Andrew Bullock
Andrew Bullock

Reputation: 37378

How can I resolve a relative path in both a web/Windows app in C#

I have an assembly that will be used in both a desktop app and an asp.net website.

I need to deal with relative paths (local files, not urls) in either situation.

How can I implement this method?

string ResolvePath(string path);

Under a web environment, I'd expect the method to behave like this (where d:\wwwroot\mywebsite is the folder IIS points at):

/folder/file.ext => d:\wwwroot\mywebsite\folder\file.ext
~/folder/file.ext => d:\wwwroot\mywebsite\folder\file.ext
d:\wwwroot\mywebsite\folder\file.ext => d:\wwwroot\mywebsite\folder\file.ext

For a desktop environment: (where c:\program files\myprogram\bin\ is the path of the .exe)

/folder/file.ext => c:\program files\myprogram\bin\folder\file.ext
c:\program files\myprogram\bin\folder\file.ext => c:\program files\myprogram\bin\folder\file.ext

I'd rather not inject a different IPathResolver depending on what state it's running in.

How do I detect which environment I'm in, and then what do I need to do in each case to resolve the possibly-relative path?

Upvotes: 3

Views: 6170

Answers (3)

Pete McPhearson
Pete McPhearson

Reputation: 469

The website binaries are copied to a temp folder when the application runs - so you usually can't get the relative path from the excecuting assembly.

This may not be a sensible way of doing this - but what I did to solve this problem was something like this:

if (filepath.StartsWith("~"))
{
   filepath = HttpContext.Current.Server.MapPath(filepath);
}
else
{
  filepath = System.IO.Path.Combine(Environment.CurrentDirectory, filepath);
}

This is because on the web version - a relative path has a ~ at the front - so I can tell if it's come from the web.config or the App.config.

Upvotes: 2

Lapsus
Lapsus

Reputation: 51

I don't think the original question was answered.

Let assume you want "..\..\data\something.dat" relative to, lets say the executable in "D:\myApp\source\bin\". Using

System.IO.Path.Combine(Environment.CurrentDirectory, relativePath);

will simply return "D:\myApp\source\bin..\..\data\something.dat" which is also easily obtained by simply concatenating strings. Combine doesn't resolve paths, it handles trailing backslashes and other trivialities. He probably wants to run:

System.IO.Path.GetFullPath("D:\myApp\source\bin..\..\data\something.dat");

To get the a resolved path: "D:\myApp\data\something.dat".

Upvotes: 5

Mehrdad Afshari
Mehrdad Afshari

Reputation: 421968

As mentioned in John's comment, relative to what? You can use System.IO.Path.Combine method to combine a base path with a relative path like:

 System.IO.Path.Combine(Environment.CurrentDirectory, relativePath);

You can replace Environment.CurrentDirectory in the above line with whatever base path you want.

You could store the base path in the configuration file.

Upvotes: 1

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