using (var openFileDialog1 = new OpenFileDialog())
{
openFileDialog1.Reset();
if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(ExcelFilePath))
{
string fileName = Path.GetFileName(ExcelFilePath);
string fileExt = Path.GetExtension(ExcelFilePath);
//Avoid "you can't open this location using this program file" dialog
//if there is a file name in the path strip it )
if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(fileName))
initialDirectory = Path.GetDirectoryName(ExcelFilePath);
//if not let it be
else
initialDirectory = ExcelFilePath;
openFileDialog1.InitialDirectory = initialDirectory;
}
else
openFileDialog1.InitialDirectory = "c:\\";
openFileDialog1.Filter = "Excel files (*.xls or *.xlsx)|*.xls;*.xlsx";
//openFileDialog1.Filter = "xls files (*.xls)|*.xls|xlsx files(*.xlsx)|.xlsx";
openFileDialog1.FilterIndex = 2;
openFileDialog1.RestoreDirectory = false;
openFileDialog1.CheckFileExists = true;
openFileDialog1.CheckPathExists = true;
if (openFileDialog1.ShowDialog() == DialogResult.OK)
{
var browseSelectionMade = BrowseSelectionMade;
if (browseSelectionMade!=null)
browseSelectionMade(this, new DataEventArgs<string>(openFileDialog1.FileName));
}
}
Regardless of whether or not I set RestoreDirectory to true, I will always browse to the LAST used directory if my initial directory is set to a path that doesn't exist. Where is the last used directory saved by OpenFileDialog? And is there a way to override this behavior? (e.g. I always want to set it to C:\ if the initial directory doesn't exist?)
It seems like all you need to do is the following:
string path; // this is the path that you are checking.
if(Directory.Exists(path)) {
openFileDialog1.InitialDirectory = path;
} else {
openFileDialog1.InitialDirectory = #"C:\";
}
That is unless I'm missing something.
Where is the last used directory saved?
It is stored in the registry. The exact location depends on the Windows version, for Win7 it is HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ComDlg32. A quick look with regedit ought to convince you that you don't want to mess with that.
The simple workaround is to provide a valid path. If the one you calculate isn't valid, Directory.Exists returns false, then provide a valid one. Like the Documents folder returned by Environment.GetFolderPath(). Then again, nothing wrong with the last used one either, the user will easily recognize it with good odds that it happens to be close to the desired one.
I don't think there is anything built in for that. Just check before you open the dialog:
if (!Directory.Exists(initialDirectory))
{
openFileDialog1.InitialDirectory = #"C:\";
}
Check to see if the ExcelFilePath exists, you check to see if it's null or empty, however if before your block you check to see if the directory exists, and if it doesn't reset the value to an empty string you should be golden.
(yes you'll need to apply your file name logic etc earlier) however once you've parsed all of that out, it's trivial to determine if the directory exits
if (!Directory.Exists(excelPath))
{
ExcelFilePath = String.Empty;
}
Also, to set the default extension you should set FilterIndex property instead of DefaultExt. see: https://stackoverflow.com/a/6104319/381082
Here's a good article on the OpenFileDialog in C#: http://www.c-sharpcorner.com/uploadfile/mahesh/openfiledialog-in-C-Sharp/
For future me
remember to do:
try
{
result = dialog.ShowDialog(Window);
}
catch
{
dialog.InitialDirectory = Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.Desktop);
result = dialog.ShowDialog(Window);
}
This helps in the situation when user opened file from location, that does not longer exists (ex. USB stick, mapped network drive) - ShowDialog throws exception if InitialDirectory is invalid.
Edit: After consulting with a more knowledgeable friend, perhaps the better solution is, in hindsight, obvious. Just store your own registry key in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\YourCompanyOrAppName\Whatevs or something similar (not sure on best practices, or which folders you have read/write access to, do your own research in that) and avoid this problem altogether. By simply letting the user navigate to where they want once, and then storing the path in the registry (as a normal string, and not a PIDL) and retrieving that path the next time. For reference, see the MSDN articles on the Registry and RegistryKey classes, and their example in the RegistryKey/Methods/SetValue article. Still, I'll leave this post as is, as a point of curiosity, or if someone has a very specific problem and needs this solution. As always, good luck!
For any poor soul wandering through here in the future, it seems I figured out how to find the last used directory. Just like stated previously, it's stored in the registry, more specifically in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ComDlg32\OpenSavePidlMRU\
Here is a set of folders for each file extension, including a "*" for unknown file extensions. I'll do this for txt files, change the path as needed. To access this path we make a RegistryKey and call OpenSubKey (BTW, full code below)
string RegistryPath = #"Software\\Microsoft\\Windows\\CurrentVersion\\Explorer\\ComDlg32\\OpenSavePidlMRU\\txt";
RegistryKey rk = Registry.CurrentUser.OpenSubKey(RegistryPath);
In here is a set of entries which all contain PIDLs (we'll get to that) of the last opened or saved items.
DO NOTE: the folder name OpenSavePidlMRU, i've seen called just OpenSaveMRU, and seems to be for versions older than win 10.
Also in here is an entry called "MRUListEx", MRU stands for "Most Recently Used". In this entry is an index of which item was... well, most recently used. So if I have 10 entries, named 0 to 9, and 9 was the last used, the first byte in MRUListEx will be 0x09. So for:
byte[] mrulistex = (byte[])rk.GetValue("MRUListEx");
byte Last = mrulistex[0];
Last will equal 0x09 (on my system)
Then we call GetValue again but for that entry
byte[] LastPathByteArray = (byte[])rk.GetValue(Last.ToString());
And here's where things get problematic, as this won't return a byte array where each byte is a character in our filepath, it returns what's known as a PIDL. While the byte array will seem to contain the path, in both char and wide char, it also contains a bunch of gibberish that can't be easily converted.
I won't pretend to understand it, but https://stackoverflow.com/a/4318663 provides a way to convert this to a string. (see code below)
string LastPath = GetPathFromPIDL(LastPathByteArray);
And we're done. PLEASE NOTE this doesn't necessarily represent a good solution, but I wasn't able to find much official documentation on this in my half hour of digging. And obviously this code doesn't check if the registry path is correct, if the registry keys exist, or do much error checking at all, but this does at least work.
using Microsoft.Win32; //for the registry class
using System.Runtime.InteropServices; //for converting the PIDL
//GetPathFromPIDL from matt.schechtman at https://stackoverflow.com/a/4318663
[DllImport("shell32.dll")]
[return: MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.Bool)]
public static extern bool SHGetPathFromIDListW(IntPtr pidl, MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.LPTStr)] StringBuilder pszPath);
private string GetPathFromPIDL(byte[] byteCode)
{
//MAX_PATH = 260
StringBuilder builder = new StringBuilder(260);
IntPtr ptr = IntPtr.Zero;
GCHandle h0 = GCHandle.Alloc(byteCode, GCHandleType.Pinned);
try
{
ptr = h0.AddrOfPinnedObject();
}
finally
{
h0.Free();
}
SHGetPathFromIDListW(ptr, builder);
return builder.ToString();
}
public void OnClick_Button_OpenFile(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
string RegistryPath = #"Software\\Microsoft\\Windows\\CurrentVersion\\Explorer\\ComDlg32\\OpenSavePidlMRU\\txt";
RegistryKey rk = Registry.CurrentUser.OpenSubKey(RegistryPath);
byte[] mrulistex = (byte[])rk.GetValue("MRUListEx");
byte Last = mrulistex[0];
byte[] LastPathByteArray = (byte[])rk.GetValue(Last.ToString());
string LastPath = GetPathFromPIDL(LastPathByteArray);
// Configure open file dialog box
Microsoft.Win32.OpenFileDialog dlg = new Microsoft.Win32.OpenFileDialog();`
dlg.InitialDirectory = LastPath;
result = dlg.ShowDialog();
if (result == true)
{
string filename = dlg.FileName;
}
//etc etc, rest of your code
}
Good luck.
In case you're using file name stored in some string, it's better to use Path to cut the file name (on my W10 the open dialog doesn't open in initial directory, if I supply just file name):
if (!System.IO.Directory.Exists(filename))
{
openDlg.InitialDirectory =
System.IO.Path.GetDirectoryName(filename);
}
This question already has answers here:
File being used by another process after using File.Create()
(11 answers)
Closed 1 year ago.
After creating a file via File.Create, I want to read it afterwards with File.ReadAllText. However, I always get an exception that says that the process cannot access the file. Once the file is created, access works without problems.
So I assume that the file is not yet released by File.Create at the time where it should be read. How do I solve this? Below is my method.
public SettingsModel LoadSettings()
{
var _fullPath = FileHelper.GetFullPath(_fileName);
if (!File.Exists(_fullPath))
{
File.Create(_fullPath).Close();
}
var serializedSettings = File.ReadAllText(_fullPath);
var settings = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<SettingsModel>(serializedSettings);
if (settings == null)
{
return new SettingsModel();
}
else
{
return settings;
}
}
You create an empty file to deserialize it afterwards. You can perform deserialization only if the file exists:
public SettingsModel LoadSettings()
{
var _fullPath = FileHelper.GetFullPath(_fileName);
var settings = File.Exists(_fullPath)
? JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<SettingsModel>(File.ReadAllText(_fullPath))
: new SettingsModel();
return settings;
}
This question already has answers here:
redirecting output to the text file c#
(3 answers)
Closed 7 years ago.
I have an answer set program (verified to work) which I would like to run within a C# console application. I want to redirect the output of that program to a text file which I can then read from later on. I tried:
string directory = #"C:\...\Clingo";
string clingoPath = "clingo.exe";
string inputPath = "Assignment2.lp";
string dataPath = "Data1.lp";
string outputPath = "result.txt";
string arguments = String.Format("1 \"{0}\" \"{1}\" >\"{2}\"", inputPath, dataPath, outputPath);
// Set the necessary properties for the process
ProcessStartInfo clingoProcessInfo = new ProcessStartInfo(clingoPath, arguments);
clingoProcessInfo.WorkingDirectory = directory;
clingoProcessInfo.UseShellExecute = false;
// Start the process
Process clingoProcess = Process.Start(clingoProcessInfo);
However, when run, I get the following error:
"***ERROR: (clingo): '>result.txt': could not open input file!"
I would like to know how to fix that.
using System.IO;
if (!File.Exists(outputPath))
{
FileStream fs = new FileStream(outputPath, FileMode.CreateNew);
}
//now do the rest of your stuff
string profile = "\\" + txtProfileLoad.Text + ".txt";
profile = Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.MyDocuments) + profile;
The variable profile is receiving the correct file path, but when I run it the File.Exists comes up false every time.
if (System.IO.File.Exists(profile) == true)
{
System.IO.StreamReader profileReader;
profileReader = new System.IO.StreamReader(profile);
do
{
profileLevel = profileLevel + profileReader.ReadLine() + "\r\n";
} while (profileReader.Peek() != -1);
loadName(profileLevel);
wordBeingUsed.finalWord = loadedName;
Close();
}
else
{
MessageBox.Show("Invalid file name. Please try again.");
}
There aren't any permissions stopping it from seeing the file.
Any help with this would be appreciated. It's been driving me crazy.
Is this a pre-existing file that you are trying to read? Or is this a new file that you are hoping to create? What is the value inside txtProfileLoad.Text, issue most likely is within this property.
Run a sanity check:
var profile = "mytestfile.txt";
var myFile = Path.Combine(Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.MyDocuments), profile);
File.WriteAllText(myFile, "Testing file write");
if (File.Exists(myFile))
{
// Access works.
}
else
{
//Didn't work
}
If above code works, then it is most likely that the name you create from txtProfileLoad.Text is different from actual file on the drive. On the other hand, if this is a file that doesn't exist yet; then of course it would return false when you check Exists.
You can use a string variable and pass the file name to it:
string tempFile = txtProfileLoad.Text;
string profile = #"C:\temp\tempfile.txt";
Also check out if you could use the file open method instead of File.Exist.
As per MSDN:
true if the caller has the required permissions and path contains the name of an existing file; otherwise, false. This method also
returns false if path is Nothing, an invalid path, or a zero-length
string. If the caller does not have sufficient permissions to read the
specified file, no exception is thrown and the method returns false
regardless of the existence of path.
Have you tried running as an administrator? Try do "right click" on the Visual Studio icon and select "Run as Administrator", and see if you still encounter the same behaviour.
I'm developing a C# web application in VS 2008. I let the user select an input file and then I store the file path in a string variable. However, it stores this path as "C:\\folder\\...". So my question is how do I convert this file path into single "\"?
Thank you guys for all your helps! Please forgive me as I am a newbie to ASP.NET development. This is more of my code in context. First I want to see if the directory exists. I guess I don't have to check this if I check if the file exists. But this should still work right? And currently my "path" string variable is not showing up the way I need it to. I'm not sure how to formulate this statement. Eventually I want to execute the ReadAllText statement (see the last line).
protected void btnAppend_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
string fullpath = Page.Request.PhysicalPath;
string fullPath2 = fullpath.Replace(#"\\", #"\");
if (!Directory.Exists(fullpath2))
{
string msg = "<h1>The upload path doesn't exist: {0}</h1>";
Response.Write(String.Format(msg, fullpath2));
Response.End();
}
string path = "#" + fullpath2 + uploadFile.PostedFile.FileName;
if (File.Exists(path))
{
// Create a file to write to.
try
{
StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(path);
string s = "";
while(sr.Peek() > 0)
s = sr.ReadLine();
sr.Close();
}
catch (IOException exc)
{
Console.WriteLine(exc.Message + "Cannot open file.");
return;
}
}
if (uploadFile.PostedFile.ContentLength > 0)
{
inputfile = System.IO.File.ReadAllText(path);
Are you sure the problem is the backslashes? Backslash is an escape character in strings, such that if you were adding it in a string you have to type it as "\\" rather than "\". (if you don't use #) Note that the debugger frequently displays the string the way you would put it in code, with the escape characters, rather than direct.
According to the documentation, Page.Request.PhysicalPath returns the path to the specific file you are in, not the directory. Directory.Exists is only true if you give it a directory, not a file. Does File.Exists() return true?
For a start, calling fullpath.Replace() does nothing to fullpath; it returns a new string. Also, when your string literals have a \ (backslash) in them, you need to tell the compiler that you're not trying to use an escape sequence:
fullpath = fullpath.Replace(#"\\", #"\");
The # means "please treat this string literally (verbatim)". In other words, "when I say backslash, I mean backslash!"
See http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/362314fe.aspx.
Edit:
As LeBleu mentioned, you are calling Directory.Exists() on a full filepath. This won't work; you need to extract the directory part from the path. Try this:
if (!Directory.Exists(Path.GetDirectoryName(fullpath)))
{
...
}
You might want to consider replacing it with the Path.DirectorySeparatorChar rather than \ on the offchance that your code may end up running on a different platform one day (mono.net allows it to be run on linux or possibly more likely it might end up on some wierd mobile platform)
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.io.path.directoryseparatorchar.aspx