Client-Side VBScript application, Incorrect Current Working Directory

Question

I'm not understanding this behavior. Maybe someone can explain to me why my current working directory is not what I expect.

On my desktop, I have a folder called STKGui:

C:\Documents and Settings\Lauren\Desktop\STKGui

Located in that directory are the following files: gui.html, style.css, save.html, load.html Within STKGui there are also the following directories: Images, Scripts, and SaveData. Scripts contains various .vbs files, including gui.vbs.

I start with gui.html. I click a button which takes me to load.html. load.html uses scripts from Scripts\gui.vbs. One of the functions loads a database, and to do so I provide the location of the database: C:\Documents and Settings\Lauren\Desktop\STKGui\SaveData\SaveData.accdb Of course I want to use a relative file path instead of a fixed path. My initial attempt to load the database failed; it was trying to load from C:\Documents and Settings\Lauren\Desktop\SaveData\SaveData.accdb. So to troubleshoot I printed out the current working directory; much to my chagrin it was C:\Documents and Settings\Lauren\Desktop

I don't understand why my desktop is my current working directory. Shouldn't it be where the file is running from? I figured it would be either C:\Documents and Settings\Lauren\Desktop\STKGui (the location of load.html) OR C:\Documents and Settings\Lauren\Desktop\STKGui\Scripts (the location of gui.vbs which contains the function that's trying to load the database/printing debug messages of the current working directory).

Can someone explain why the current working directory is what it is, or better yet tell me how to get what I really want, which is the location of the files executing? (I don't care if it's the main STKGui folder or the scripts folder--as long as it's within the application's directory structure I can work with it!)

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EDIT (7/14/10 4:02 pm EDT):

Various attempts at printing the current working directory or grabbing files based on what I -thought- was the relative path from my executing script have resulted in my desktop's path instead of the path of the executed script. I stumbled across this link: http://leereid.wordpress.com/2008/03/19/vbscript-current-directory-or-folder/ but none of the solutions are working for me, as I get run-time errors regarding the Wscript object. So while I don't know if any of the solutions on the aforementioned link will produce different results, if someone can help me get at least one of them working so I can find out that may be a step in the right direction.

One of the solutions, reproduced below:

Set oShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
Set ofso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
oShell.CurrentDirectory = ofso.GetParentFolderName(Wscript.ScriptFullName)

produces the following error:

Object required: 'Wscript' line: 659 char: 1

with line 659 being:

oShell.CurrentDirectory = ofso.GetParentFolderName(Wscript.ScriptFullName)

Answer 1

For Server-Side:

You should be using Server.MapPath() to get your "working directory". For instance, if you want to get the path to your database file in C:\Documents and Settings\Lauren\Desktop\STKGui\SaveData\SaveData.accdb, your app root being C:\Documents and Settings\Lauren\Desktop\STKGui, you would use Server.MapPath("SaveData\SaveData.accdb").

For Client-Side:

Upon closer examination and digging up some memories, I realized that MapPath is only available from the Server class. Instead, you need to create a file system object like this:

''get fs object
Set objFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
''get actual file using path relative to calling vbs file
Set objFile = objFSO.GetFile("SaveData\SaveData.accdb")
''get path to the database
set sPathToDatabase = objFSO.GetAbsolutePathName(objFile)

In case it helps, here is a great resource for working with the file system in vbScript: http://www.activexperts.com/activmonitor/windowsmanagement/adminscripts/filesfolders/files/

Answer 2

This solution was NOT ideal, but what I ended up doing was parsing the url in my browser to get the directory.

guiPath = Mid(location.PathName, 2, len(location.PathName))

Set regExp = New RegExp
regExp.IgnoreCase = False
regExp.Global = True
regExp.Pattern = ".*/"

Set matchCollection = regExp.Execute(guiPath)

Set match = matchCollection(0)

guiPath = match.value

regExp.Pattern = "%20"

guiPath = regExp.Replace(guiPath, " ")

systemsDBPath = guiPath & "SaveData\SaveData.accdb"

Like I said, less than ideal. May not even work once I'm working with the application this will be running in. But I couldn't find a better way.