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How to get parent directory in a path c#?

it is my path example E:\test\img\sig.jpg
I want to get E:\test\img to create directory
i try split but it be img
so I try function Directory.CreateDirectory and the path is E:\test\img\sig.jpg\
say me a ideas?

The recommended way is to use Path.GetDirectoryName():
string file = #"E:\test\img\sig.jpg";
string path = Path.GetDirectoryName(file); // results in #"E:\test\img"

Use Path.GetDirectoryName which returns the directory information for the specified path string.
string directoryName = Path.GetDirectoryName(filePath);

The Path class contains a lot of useful methods for path handling, which are more reliable than manual string manipulation:
var directoryComponent = Path.GetDirectoryName(#"E:\test\img\sig.jpg");
// yields `E:\test\img`
For completeness, I'd like to mention Path.Combine, which does the opposite:
var dirAndFile = Path.Combine(#"E:\test\img", "sig.jpg");
// no more checking for trailing slashes, hooray!
To create the directory, you can use Directory.Create. Note that it is not necessary to check if the directory exists first.

You can try this code to find the directory name.
System.IO.FileInfo fi = new System.IO.FileInfo(#"E:\test\img\sig.jpg");
string dirname = fi.DirectoryName;
and to create the directory
Directory.CreateDirectory(dirname );

Another solution can be :
FileInfo f = new FileInfo(#"E:\test\img\sig.jpg");
if (f.Exists)
{
string dirName= f.DirectoryName;
}

Cannot move a file to another folder. Error returns on a wrong path

Here's my code in moving excel file to be specific..
if (Directory.GetFiles(destinationPath, "*.xls").Length != 0)
{
//Move files to history folder
string[] files = Directory.GetFiles(destinationPath); //value -- D://FS//
foreach (string s in files)
{
var fName = Path.GetFileName(s); //12232015.xls
var sourcePath = Path.Combine(destinationPath, fName);
var destFile = Path.Combine(historyPath, fName); // -- D://FS//History
File.Move(fName, destFile);
}
}
But it gets an error of
Could not find file 'D:\Project\ProjectService\bin\Debug\12232015.xls'.
Why it finds under my project not on the specific folder i set?
Thank you.

You're only using the name of the file:
var fName = Path.GetFileName(s); //12232015.xls
//...
File.Move(fName, destFile);
Without a complete path, the system will look in the current working directory. Which is the directory where the application is executing.
You should use the entire path for the source file:
File.Move(sourcePath, destFile);
Explicitly specifying the full path is almost always the best approach. Relative paths are notoriously difficult to manage.

There is an Logical error. Change
File.Move(fName, destFile);
to
File.Move(sourcePath, destFile);
as fName only contains file name and not fullpath. The file is checked in working directory.

Copying an image file to an empty folder in using WPF C#

After going through all the related stuff to copying files i am unable to find an answer to my
problem of an exception occurring while i was trying to copy a file to an empty folder in WPF application. Here is the code snippet.
public static void Copy()
{
string _finalPath;
foreach (var name in files) // name is the filename extracted using GetFileName in a list of strings
{
_finalPath = filePath; //it is the destination folder path e.g,C:\Users\Neha\Pictures\11-03-2014
if(System.IO.Directory.Exists(_finalPath))
{
_finalPath = System.IO.Path.Combine(_finalPath,name);
System.IO.File.Copy(name, _finalPath , true);
}
}
}
While debugging exception is occuring at file.copy() statement which says
"FileNotFoundException was unhandled" could not find file
i already know about the combining path and other aspects of copy but i dont know why this exception is being raised.
I am a noob to WPF please help.........

Use following code:
public static void Copy()
{
string _finalPath;
var files = System.IO.Directory.GetFiles(#"C:\"); // Here replace C:\ with your directory path.
foreach (var file in files)
{
var filename = file.Substring(file.LastIndexOf("\\") + 1); // Get the filename from absolute path
_finalPath = filePath; //it is the destination folder path e.g,C:\Users\Neha\Pictures\11-03-2014
if (System.IO.Directory.Exists(_finalPath))
{
_finalPath = System.IO.Path.Combine(_finalPath, filename);
System.IO.File.Copy(file, _finalPath, true);
}
}
}

The GetFileName ()
only returns the actual name of the file (drops the path) what you want is a full path to the file. So you getting an exception because the 'name' does not exist on your drive (path is unknown)

You're variable, name, is most likely just the file name (i.e. something.jpg). When you use the File.Copy(...) method, if you do not supply an absolute path the method assumes a path relative to the executable.
Basically, if you are running your app in, for example, C:\Projects\SomeProject\bin\Debug\SomeProject.exe, then it is assuming your file is C:\Projects\SomeProject\bin\Debug\something.jpg.

How to navigate a few folders up?

One option would be to do System.IO.Directory.GetParent() a few times. Is there a more graceful way of travelling a few folders up from where the executing assembly resides?
What I am trying to do is find a text file that resides one folder above the application folder. But the assembly itself is inside the bin, which is a few folders deep in the application folder.

Other simple way is to do this:
string path = #"C:\Folder1\Folder2\Folder3\Folder4";
string newPath = Path.GetFullPath(Path.Combine(path, #"..\..\"));
Note This goes two levels up. The result would be:
newPath = #"C:\Folder1\Folder2\";
Additional Note
Path.GetFullPath normalizes the final result based on what environment your code is running on windows/mac/mobile/...

if c:\folder1\folder2\folder3\bin is the path then the following code will return the path base folder of bin folder
//string directory=System.IO.Directory.GetParent(Environment.CurrentDirectory).ToString());
string directory=System.IO.Directory.GetParent(Environment.CurrentDirectory).ToString();
ie,c:\folder1\folder2\folder3
if you want folder2 path then you can get the directory by
string directory = System.IO.Directory.GetParent(System.IO.Directory.GetParent(Environment.CurrentDirectory).ToString()).ToString();
then you will get path as c:\folder1\folder2\

You can use ..\path to go one level up, ..\..\path to go two levels up from path.
You can use Path class too.
C# Path class

This is what worked best for me:
string parentOfStartupPath = Path.GetFullPath(Path.Combine(Application.StartupPath, #"../"));
Getting the 'right' path wasn't the problem, adding '../' obviously does that, but after that, the given string isn't usable, because it will just add the '../' at the end.
Surrounding it with Path.GetFullPath() will give you the absolute path, making it usable.

public static string AppRootDirectory()
{
string _BaseDirectory = AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory;
return Path.GetFullPath(Path.Combine(_BaseDirectory, #"..\..\"));
}

Maybe you could use a function if you want to declare the number of levels and put it into a function?
private String GetParents(Int32 noOfLevels, String currentpath)
{
String path = "";
for(int i=0; i< noOfLevels; i++)
{
path += #"..\";
}
path += currentpath;
return path;
}
And you could call it like this:
String path = this.GetParents(4, currentpath);

C#
string upTwoDir = Path.GetFullPath(Path.Combine(System.AppContext.BaseDirectory, #"..\..\"));

The following method searches a file beginning with the application startup path (*.exe folder). If the file is not found there, the parent folders are searched until either the file is found or the root folder has been reached. null is returned if the file was not found.
public static FileInfo FindApplicationFile(string fileName)
{
string startPath = Path.Combine(Application.StartupPath, fileName);
FileInfo file = new FileInfo(startPath);
while (!file.Exists) {
if (file.Directory.Parent == null) {
return null;
}
DirectoryInfo parentDir = file.Directory.Parent;
file = new FileInfo(Path.Combine(parentDir.FullName, file.Name));
}
return file;
}
Note: Application.StartupPath is usually used in WinForms applications, but it works in console applications as well; however, you will have to set a reference to the System.Windows.Forms assembly. You can replace Application.StartupPath by
Path.GetDirectoryName(Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location) if you prefer.
I use this strategy to find configuration and resource files. This allows me to share them for multiple applications or for Debug and Release versions of an application by placing them in a common parent folder.

Hiding a looped call to Directory.GetParent(path) inside an static method is the way to go.
Messing around with ".." and Path.Combine will ultimately lead to bugs related to the operation system or simply fail due to mix up between relative paths and absolute paths.
public static class PathUtils
{
public static string MoveUp(string path, int noOfLevels)
{
string parentPath = path.TrimEnd(new[] { '/', '\\' });
for (int i=0; i< noOfLevels; i++)
{
parentPath = Directory.GetParent(parentPath ).ToString();
}
return parentPath;
}
}

this may help
string parentOfStartupPath = Path.GetFullPath(Path.Combine(Application.StartupPath, #"../../")) + "Orders.xml";
if (File.Exists(parentOfStartupPath))
{
// file found
}

If you know the folder you want to navigate to, find the index of it then substring.
var ind = Directory.GetCurrentDirectory().ToString().IndexOf("Folderame");
string productFolder = Directory.GetCurrentDirectory().ToString().Substring(0, ind);

I have some virtual directories and I cannot use Directory methods. So, I made a simple split/join function for those interested. Not as safe though.
var splitResult = filePath.Split(new[] {'/', '\\'}, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);
var newFilePath = Path.Combine(filePath.Take(splitResult.Length - 1).ToArray());
So, if you want to move 4 up, you just need to change the 1 to 4 and add some checks to avoid exceptions.

Path parsing via System.IO.Directory.GetParent is possible, but would require to run same function multiple times.
Slightly simpler approach is to threat path as a normal string, split it by path separator, take out what is not necessary and then recombine string back.
var upperDir = String.Join(Path.DirectorySeparatorChar, dir.Split(Path.DirectorySeparatorChar).SkipLast(2));
Of course you can replace 2 with amount of levels you need to jump up.
Notice also that this function call to Path.GetFullPath (other answers in here) will query whether path exists using file system. Using basic string operation does not require any file system operations.

Moving files based on name to the corresponding folder

Hello everyone and well met! I have tried a lot of different methods/programs to try and solve my problem. I'm a novice programmer and have taken a Visual Basic Class and Visual C# class.
I'm working with this in C#
I started off by making a very basic move file program and it worked fine for one file but as I mentioned I will be needing to move a ton of files based on name
What I am trying to do is move .pst (for example dave.pst) files from my exchange server based on username onto a backup server in the users folder (folder = dave) that has the same name as the .pst file
The ideal program would be:
Get files from the folder with the .pst extension
Move files to appropriate folder that has the same name in front of the .pst file extension
Update:
// String pstFileFolder = #"C:\test\";
// var searchPattern = "*.pst";
// var extension = ".pst";
//var serverFolder = #"C:\test3\";
// String filename = System.IO.Path.GetFileNameWithoutExtension(pstFileFolder);
// Searches the directory for *.pst
DirectoryInfo sourceDirectory = new DirectoryInfo(#"C:\test\");
String strTargetDirectory = (#"C:\test3\");
Console.WriteLine(sourceDirectory);
Console.ReadKey(true);>foreach (FileInfo file in sourceDirectory.GetFiles()) {
Console.WriteLine(file);
Console.ReadKey(true);
// Try to create the directory.
System.IO.Directory.CreateDirectory(strTargetDirectory);
file.MoveTo(strTargetDirectory + "\\" + file.Name);
}
This is just a simple copy procedure. I'm completely aware. The
Console.WriteLine(file);
Console.ReadKey(true);
Are for verification purpose right now to make sure I'm getting the proper files and I am. Now I just need to find the folder based on the name of the .pst file(the folder for the users are already created), make a folder(say 0304 for the year), then copy that .pst based on the name.
Thanks a ton for your help guys. #yuck, thanks for the code.

Have a look at the File and Directory classes in the System.IO namespace. You could use the Directory.GetFiles() method to get the names of the files you need to transfer.

Here's a console application to get you started. Note that there isn't any error checking and it makes some assumptions about how the files are named (e.g. that they end with .pst and don't contain that elsewhere in the name):
private static void Main() {
var pstFileFolder = #"C:\TEMP\PST_Files\";
var searchPattern = "*.pst";
var extension = ".pst";
var serverFolder = #"\\SERVER\PST_Backup\";
// Searches the directory for *.pst
foreach (var file in Directory.GetFiles(pstFileFolder, searchPattern)) {
// Exposes file information like Name
var theFileInfo = new FileInfo(file);
// Gets the user name based on file name
// e.g. DaveSmith.pst would become DaveSmith
var userName = theFileInfo.Name.Replace(extension, "");
// Sets up the destination location
// e.g. \\SERVER\PST_Backup\DaveSmith\DaveSmith.pst
var destination = serverFolder + userName + #"\" + theFileInfo.Name;
File.Move(file, destination);
}
}

System.IO is your friend in this case ;)
First, Determine file name by:
String filename = System.IO.Path.GetFileNameWithoutExtension(SOME_PATH)
To make path to new folder, use Path.Combine:
String targetDir = Path.Combine(SOME_ROOT_DIR,filename);
Next, create folder with name based on given fileName
System.IO.Directory.CreateDirectory(targetDir);
Ah! You need to have name of file, but with extension this time. Path.GetFileName:
String fileNameWithExtension = System.IO.Path.GetFileName(SOME_PATH);
And you can move file (by File.Move) to it:
System.IO.File.Move(SOME_PATH,Path.Combine(targetDir,fileNameWithExtension)
Laster already show you how to get file list in folder.

I personally prefer DirectoryInfo because it is more object-oriented.
DirectoryInfo sourceDirectory = new DirectoryInfo("C:\MySourceDirectoryPath");
String strTargetDirectory = "C:\MyTargetDirectoryPath";
foreach (FileInfo file in sourceDirectory.GetFiles())
{
file.MoveTo(strTargetDirectory + "\\" + file.Name);
}