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DenaliHardtail
DenaliHardtail

Reputation: 28336

Getting the path of the current assembly

How do I get the path of the current assembly? I need to get data from some paths relative to the location of hte current assembly (.dll).

I thought someone told me to use the reflection namespace but I can't find anything in there.

Upvotes: 45

Views: 65199

Answers (4)

b_levitt
b_levitt

Reputation: 7445

I prefer 

new System.Uri(Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().EscapedCodeBase).LocalPath;

EscapedCodeBase covers the scenario where your local path might have an invalid URI char in it (see https://stackoverflow.com/a/21056435/852208)

LocalPath includes the full path for both local paths and unc paths, where AbsolutePath trims off "\\server"

Upvotes: 3

Reed Copsey
Reed Copsey

Reputation: 564931

You can use:

string path = (new System.Uri(Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().CodeBase)).AbsolutePath;

Some suggestions in the comments are to pass that through System.Uri.UnescapeDataString (from vvnurmi) to ensure that any percent-encoding is handled, and to use Path.GetFullpath (from TrueWill) to ensure that the path is in standard Windows form (rather than having slashes instead of backslashes). Here's an example of what you get at each stage:

string s = Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().CodeBase;
Console.WriteLine("CodeBase: [" + s + "]");
s = (new Uri(s)).AbsolutePath;
Console.WriteLine("AbsolutePath: [" + s + "]");
s = Uri.UnescapeDataString(s);
Console.WriteLine("Unescaped: [" + s + "]");
s = Path.GetFullPath(s);
Console.WriteLine("FullPath: [" + s + "]");

Output if we're running C:\Temp\Temp App\bin\Debug\TempApp.EXE:

CodeBase: [file:///C:/Temp/Temp App/bin/Debug/TempApp.EXE]
AbsolutePath: [C:/Temp/Temp%20App/bin/Debug/TempApp.EXE]
Unescaped: [C:/Temp/Temp App/bin/Debug/TempApp.EXE]
FullPath: [C:\Temp\Temp App\bin\Debug\TempApp.EXE]

Upvotes: 82

Daniel Brückner
Daniel Brückner

Reputation: 59705

System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location

Upvotes: 46

Sam Axe
Sam Axe

Reputation: 33738

Just to make it clear:

Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location

Upvotes: 7

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