I am developing a desktop application using C# winforms. I am creating some files and folders on the directory that my application runs at. I am deploying the application by using the click once approach. My problem is that everytime i update my application it creates a new root folder to run at. And i won't be able to use those files anymore. Any workarounds for that? I am thinkin of creating a folder at "C:\MyCompany\MyApplication" but then it will be easily reachable and breakable. I will be happy to hear any other advises or knowledges that will favor me :)
You should store the files and folders in the user's Application Data folder. You can get the path to this folder with this statement:
string appDataPath = System.Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.ApplicationData);
You should then create a folder in that path for your application and store everything there.
There are of course other solutions, but the point is that you should not use the application folder, since this will indeed change everytime you publish, and it is bad practice for several other reasons (data backup, etc.).
Related
I have students in high school who have created some programs using Visual Studio C#. They created some games and would like to now upload them to the web. I am pretty new to Visual Studio C#. I thought after a program was "built" that you could go into the bin/debug folder and get the exe file for the program and be able to play the game without having to have Visual Studio on the actual computer you are playing it on. It works with some of their games but some of them, there are graphical files that are missing in the exe file if all the other files aren't stored in the same place. How can I get a clean exe of their game? Can that exe be loaded up onto a web server so they can play it from there or at least download it from there?
Microsoft wrote a guide on how to do exactly this. It's on their MSDN website, which is sort of like the developer back-bone for a lot of Microsoft software and documentation.
Old guide: Adding and Editing Resources (Visual C#)
Newer guide: How to: Add or Remove Resources
The gist is that the program needs to know where the files are, relative to the location of the compiled binary (in this case, an .EXE); There's several different ways to do this, depending on your level of expertise. I would suggest that you take a look at the guides above to start that journey.
there's a few ways of doing this. (Also, make sure you're creating a 'release' build when you compile).
You can include resources in your game by creating a resources file. This is something I usually do only on winforms applications etc.
If you have on-disk files you need to distribute those on-disk files along side your game. You could do this by zipping up your game.exe and the /files/images.img folder (or what ever your resources content folder is named).
If you're feeling adventurous you could create a 'deployment project' which is a project that allows you to create an installer file. This is a bit more work however you will have fine grained control over what files go where etc.
Good luck!
EXE files generally aren't self contained for video games with many resources, just add resources in an external folder and make sure the paths to the resources in their games are not absolute but relative in the local directory.
So for example:
get rid of paths like C:/Users/Bob/Desktop/Game/Images/player.png and replace with /Images/Player.png.
Also, an EXE generally doesn't run client side on webpages, it is possible but difficult. Things such as Flash are made for this sort of issue. I'd say make the webpage a place where they can download their games. Github has a nice way to do free websites called gh-pages. OFC, you could host one yourself but that would require a lot of setup work.
Like Monza said, you can zip up the files for download. Or, you could create an installer if you wanted to be really ambitious.
I thought after a program was "built" that you could go into the bin/debug folder and get the exe file for the program and be able to play the game without having to have Visual Studio on the actual computer you are playing it on.
That is correct, given that the other machine has the necessary .NET framework version installed AND any other resources like .dll files and config files are also present. When the application is ready for release, you can set the Build options in the project properties to Release, and then when you build all the files needed for distribution will be in the bin\Release folder.
It works with some of their games but some of them, there are graphical files that are missing in the exe file if all the other files aren't stored in the same place.
This may depend on how the application was written. If resources like pictures are embedded in the assembly then those files will not be needed to run on another machine. If the application is using hard coded paths for the image resources in the source code, then the application will likely break if the necessary files aren't present when the .exe is executed.
Can that exe be loaded up onto a web server so they can play it from there or at least download it from there?
Yes - you could upload the .exe to a file server to make available for a download, but you would not be able to run it within a browser over the web. I would recommend zipping up the .exe and other files needed and hosting the .zip file on the web server for download; browsers may give a warning or block downloading an .exe .
Hope this explains it a little bit for you.
I'm developing a Web application that uses a couple XML files to store data. I have their Build Action set to Content, and on install the files are copied successfully to the Applications Virtual Directory:
C:\inetpub\wwwroot\ApplicationName\
The problem I'm having is that writing to these XML files (in order to save settings and things like that) causes a lot of write permissions issues. Therefore to get around it, I'm trying to copy these files from the virtual directory they're installed to to a new directory under the C drive, using the following PostBuildEvent in the Web Deployment Project:
xcopy "$(TargetDir)*.xml" "C:\CompanyName\ApplicationName\" /y
However, this does nothing. I'm not sure if this is because PostBuildEvents in the installer are not actually fired on install, but only on building the installer, or if TargetDir represents the bin directory:
C:\inetpub\wwwroot\ApplicationName\bin\
instead of the root application virtual directory:
C:\inetpub\wwwroot\ApplicationName\
Does anyone have any ideas? Has anyone dealt with this sort of thing before? I'm really stumped on this one.
Update:
I included a PostBuildEvent that should give full permissions to all users:
icacls "$(TargetDir)" /grant Users:F
But it doesn't seem to have resolved the problem.
I'm also unsure where exactly $(TargetDir) if pointing to, if it would be ..\ApplicationName\ or ..\ApplicationName\bin\
All you have to do is give full permissions to the user under whose context the Web Application Pool runs.
You can find this user by starting IIS manager and look at the Application Pools and Identity column
Something like
cacls C:\inetpub\wwwroot\ApplicationName /G Users:F
will give all permissions to this subdirectory to all users on the computer, If you are running under ApplicationPoolIndentity refer here
Turns out there's a much easier way to do what I was trying to do.
Instead of using PostBuildEvents to create a new directory structure and move files there, I added the new directory structure into
InstallerProject > View > File System
after which I located the Content Files from SomeProject entry in my installer project, and changed the Folder value to the newly specified directory structure, in this case
C:\CompanyName\ApplicationName\
This seems to work fine, I'm now able to access these files freely as I originally intended.
I have an application that stores images uploaded by user. Those images goes to content/images/upload. Problem is that if i published without the skip extra files on destination, all user uploaded content gets deleted. Im pretty sure im doing it wrongly, which would be the best approach for this situation ?
im worried about losing user generated content this way misconfiguring an option in publish.
One approach I've used is to move the physical path of the "upload" older outside the application folder structure. I'd use an IIS virtual directory to mount the folder to the application. For example, if the folder structure currently looks like this:
c:\inetpub\
wwwroot\
content\
images\
upload\
You might change it to this:
c:\inetpub
upload\ <-- must be manually created on the web server
wwwroot\
content\
images\
You'd remove the upload folder from the web application in Visual Studio. Log into the webserver and create the folder under inetpub (could go anywhere, really). Then go into IIS manager and create a virtual directory called upload that points to the c:\inetpub\upload folder.
The upload folder is no longer part of the Visual Studio project so the "publish" feature won't touch it.
I have an Application in WinForms,
I have created SetupDevelopment project and then install an application using Setup.exe file
i have added MSAcceess db file into application folder file,
when i install an application the database file gets readonly. how can i make file writtable after installation?
I found some solution on internet and found that when i tried to install application in different path other than "C:\ProgramFile\" and make application available to all user,it solves my Problem, but i want to install an application only in "C:\ProgramFile\" and want to available to only "Current user"
how can i achieve my Problem ?
In modern Windows Operating System the folders 'Program Files' or 'Program Files (x86)' are read only for the common users. This choice has been done for security reasons and you cannot easily bypass this rule. The reccomended folders, to use just for the current user, are C:\users\username\AppData\Roaming or C:\users\username\AppData\Local identified by the Environment.SpecialFolder.ApplicationData or Environment.SpecialFolder.LocalApplicationData. To this base folders add another subfolder identifying your application or company and install your database there.
If you want your database available to all users of the current PC, you could install it in the Environment.SpecialFolder.CommonApplicationData that resolves to C:\programdata. (Again, adding a subfolder specific for your application or company)
Again, don't try to force the operating system to work against its rules. You will find yourself in trouble very often.
I am using inno setup to make a installation package for my application, and my application is written by C# + .Net 2.0 + VSTS 2008. Inno setup => http://www.jrsoftware.org/isinfo.php and I install my application under Program Files/Foo folder (Foo is my application name). My application is targeting to Windows Vista.
The issue I found is my program cannot write to the folder Program Files/Foo. And I need the permission of write to this folder in order to save some configuration files. The strange thing I notice is the folder Program Files/Foo is marked as readonly and I have checked all folders under Program Files are marked with read only, such as Office.
My questions are,
Why all folders are marked as read only under Program Files? It means we should not write to individual application folders under Program Files? If not, where should we write information to disk like user last selected configuration information of an individual application?
If we could write to individual application folders under Program Files, what is the solution? I do not want my application to Run As administrator to solve this issue, and if there are solution to write to this folder, I want to require minimal permission if possible.
You should write user specific config data to the Application Data folder for the current user, using the special folders enum and the Enivronment.GetFolderPath.
Best Practice is to not store config data in the Program Files folder. Instead, store your application's data in %AppData%\YourApplicationName. Depending on whether you want to store your config data per-user or in a shared common folder, use one of the following enums to get the folder path:
string userAppData = Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.ApplicationData);
string commonAppData = Envrionment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.CommonApplicationData);
By default, Vista users do not run programs as Administrators and hence those programs have only read access to the folders under "Program Files". Users can change this behavior by disabling UAC and you could ask your users to do that, but in an office setting users might not have that option. That's why you use AppData instead -- applications can always read and write data to the AppData folder.
Information on UAC can be found at Microsoft's site. Although this page is fairly long, it's a starting point for understanding UAC:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb530410.aspx
A common solution would be to install configuration files to the Application Data folder i.e. like follows:
Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.ApplicationData)