C#: How do I get the path of the assembly the code is in?

Question

Is there a way to get the path for the assembly in which the current code resides? I do not want the path of the calling assembly, just the one containing the code.

Basically my unit test needs to read some xml test files which are located relative to the dll. I want the path to always resolve correctly regardless of whether the testing dll is run from TestDriven.NET, the MbUnit GUI or something else.

Edit: People seem to be misunderstanding what I'm asking.

My test library is located in say c:\projects\myapplication\daotests\bin\Debug\daotests.dll and I would like to get the "*c:\projects\myapplication\daotests\bin\Debug*" path.

The three suggestions so far fail me when I run from the MbUnit Gui:

• Console.Out.Write(Environment.CurrentDirectory) gives c:\Program Files\MbUnit

• Console.Out.Write(System.Reflection.Assembly.GetAssembly(typeof(DaoTests)).Location) gives C:\Documents and Settings\george\Local Settings\Temp\ ....\DaoTests.dll

• Console.Out.Write(System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location) gives the same as the previous

Answer 1

This should work:

string path = System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location

Answer 2

The current directory where you exist.

Environment.CurrentDirectory;  // This is the current directory of your application

If you copy the .xml file out with build you should find it.

or

System.Reflection.Assembly assembly = System.Reflection.Assembly.GetAssembly(typeof(SomeObject));

// The location of the Assembly
assembly.Location;

Answer 3

Does this help?

//get the full location of the assembly with DaoTests in it
string fullPath = System.Reflection.Assembly.GetAssembly(typeof(DaoTests)).Location;

//get the folder that's in
string theDirectory = Path.GetDirectoryName( fullPath );

Answer 4

assembly.GetFiles()[0].Name

Answer 5

I suspect that the real issue here is that your test runner is copying your assembly to a different location. There's no way at runtime to tell where the assembly was copied from, but you can probably flip a switch to tell the test runner to run the assembly from where it is and not to copy it to a shadow directory.

Such a switch is likely to be different for each test runner, of course.

Have you considered embedding your XML data as resources inside your test assembly?

Answer 6

What about this:

System.IO.Path.GetDirectoryName(System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location);

Answer 7

string path = Path.GetDirectoryName(typeof(DaoTests).Module.FullyQualifiedName);

Answer 8

I've been using Assembly.CodeBase instead of Location:

Assembly a;
a = Assembly.GetAssembly(typeof(DaoTests));
string s = a.CodeBase.ToUpper(); // file:///c:/path/name.dll
Assert.AreEqual(true, s.StartsWith("FILE://"), "CodeBase is " + s);
s = s.Substring(7, s.LastIndexOf('/') - 7); // 7 = "file://"
while (s.StartsWith("/")) {
    s = s.Substring(1, s.Length - 1);
}
s = s.Replace("/", "\\");

It's been working, but I'm no longer sure it is 100% correct. The page at http://blogs.msdn.com/suzcook/archive/2003/06/26/assembly-codebase-vs-assembly-location.aspx says:

"The CodeBase is a URL to the place where the file was found, while the Location is the path where it was actually loaded. For example, if the assembly was downloaded from the internet, its CodeBase may start with "http://", but its Location may start with "C:\". If the file was shadow-copied, the Location would be the path to the copy of the file in the shadow copy dir. It’s also good to know that the CodeBase is not guaranteed to be set for assemblies in the GAC. Location will always be set for assemblies loaded from disk, however."

You may want to use CodeBase instead of Location.

Answer 9

I've defined the following property as we use this often in unit testing.

static public string AssemblyDirectory
{
    get
    {
        string codeBase = Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().CodeBase;
        UriBuilder uri = new UriBuilder(codeBase);
        string path = Uri.UnescapeDataString(uri.Path);
        return Path.GetDirectoryName(path);
    }
}

The Assembly.Location property sometimes gives you some funny results when using NUnit (where assemblies run from a temporary folder), so I prefer to use CodeBase which gives you the path in URI format, then UriBuild.UnescapeDataString removes the the File:// at the beginning, and GetDirectoryName changes it to the normal windows format.

Answer 10

Here is a VB.Net port of John Sibly's code. VB is not case sensitive, so a couple of his variable names were colliding with Type names. Thanks for the code John!

Public Shared ReadOnly Property AssemblyDirectory() As String
    Get
        Dim codeBase As String = Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().CodeBase
        Dim uriBuilder As New UriBuilder(codeBase)
        Dim assemblyPath As String = Uri.UnescapeDataString(uriBuilder.Path)
        Return Path.GetDirectoryName(assemblyPath)
    End Get
End Property

Answer 11

Same as John's answer, but a slightly less verbose extension method.

public static string GetCurrentExecutingDirectory(this Assembly assembly)
{
    string filePath = new Uri(Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().CodeBase).LocalPath;
    return Path.GetDirectoryName(filePath);            
}

Answer 12

As Simple as this

 var dir = AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory;

Answer 13

AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory works with MbUnit GUI.