How to determine a full path of a named folder?

Question

I want to determine the full path of certain folders. In my array, I just have the names of the folders, but when my application will get installed on another user's machine, my program must be able to determine the full-path of these folders.

How to get the fullpath?

Answer 1

By prefixing it with another Path. Which Path depends on your application.

string path = ...
string fullPath = System.IO.Path.Combine(path, folderNames[i]);

You could take a look at Environment.GetFolderPath(...)

Answer 2

FileInfo.FullName, if you are lucky and the constructor finds your file somehow (e.g. current working directory).

Answer 3

You can check the method Path.GetFullPath, it could be useful to what you're trying to do.

Path.GetFullPath Method

Answer 4

Did you mean the My Documents folder and the rest? It's not obvious for me from your question.

The My Documents folder is:

 Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.MyDocuments)

And the rest of the special system folders can be retrieved in a similar way.

Answer 5

Sounds to me that you mean actually the current path plus an additional path. I.e., suppose your application is installed in c:\installations and you need the relative path of resource\en-US, you want to find c:\installations\resource\en-US.

Normally I would go for getting the current path, but in Windows it is possible to start an application as if it is executing from a different path. A fool-proof way of getting the path of the current application (where it is installed) is as follows:

// gets the path of the current executing executable: your program
string path = Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location;

// transform it into a real path...
FileInfo info = new FileInfo(path);

// ...to make it easier to retrieve the directory part
string currentPath = info.Directory.FullName;

Now it becomes trivial to get new paths.

string someRelativePath = @"reource\en-US";
string someFullPath = Path.Combine(currentPath, someRelativePath);

I know, it looks a bit contrived, but it is safer then using the current path.