We Keep Coding

File.Create() method fails when part of path does not exist [duplicate]

This question already has answers here:
How do I create a file AND any folders, if the folders don't exist?
(9 answers)
Closed 4 years ago.
I've been writing a simple console application as a part of exercise in project. Tasks are rather straightforward:
2nd method has to create nested directory tree where every folder name is Guid.
3rd method has to put empty file in chosen directory tree at specific level.
My main problem lies within 3rd method. Because while it works fine and creates file 'till third level of any directory, beyond that point it always throw "System.IO.DirectoryNotFoundException" - as it "can't find part of the path".
I use string as a container for path, but since it's few Guid set together it gets pretty long. I had similar problem with creating directory, but in order to work I had to simply put #"\?\" prefix behind the path. So is there any way to make it work, or maybe get around that?
Here are method that fails. Specifically it's
File.Create(PathToFile + #"\blank.txt").Dispose();
And part of code which makes string and invokes it:
string ChosenDirectoryPath = currDir.FullName + #"\";
for (int i = 0; i <= Position; i++)
{
ChosenDirectoryPath += ListsList[WhichList][i];
}
if (!File.Exists(ChosenDirectoryPath + #"\blank.txt"))
{
FileMaker(ref ChosenDirectoryPath);
}
Edit:
To be specific, directories are made by method:
public List<string> DirectoryList = new List<string>();
internal static List<List<string>> ListsList = new List<List<string>>();
private static DirectoryInfo currDir = new DirectoryInfo(".");
private string FolderName;
private static string DirectoryPath;
public void DeepDive(List<string> DirectoryList, int countdown)
{
FolderName = GuidMaker();
DirectoryList.Add(FolderName + #"\");
if (countdown <= 1)
{
foreach (string element in DirectoryList)
{
DirectoryPath += element;
}
Directory.CreateDirectory(#"\\?\" + currDir.FullName + #"\" + DirectoryPath);
Console.WriteLine("Folders were nested at directory {0} under folder {1}\n", currDir.FullName, DirectoryList[0]);
ListsList.Add(DirectoryList);
DirectoryPath = null;
return;
}
DeepDive(DirectoryList, countdown-1);
}
Which is pretty messy because of recursion (iteration would be better but i wanted to do it this way to learn something). The point is that directories are made and stored in list of lists.
Creating files works properly but only for the first three nested folders. So the problem is that it is somehow loosing it's path to file in 4th and 5th level, and can't even make those manually. Could it be too long path? And how to fix this.
Here is exception that throws out:
System.IO.DirectoryNotFoundException: „Can't find part of the path
„C:\Some\More\Folders\1b0c7715-ee01-4df8-9079-82ea7990030f\c6c806b0-b69d-4a3a-88d0-1bd8a0e31eb2\9671f2b3-3041-42d5-b631-4719d36c2ac5\6406f00f-7750-4b5a-a45d-cebcecb0b70e\bcacef2b-e391-4799-b84e-f2bc55605d40\blank.txt”.”
So it throws full path to file and yet says that it can't find it.

You problem is that File.Create doesn't create the corresponding directories for you, instead it throws a System.IO.DirectoryNotFoundException.
You have to create those directories yourself, by using System.IO.Directory.CreateDirectory()
If this exception occurs because of a too long path, you can still use the "long path syntax (\\?\)" like you did when creating your directories.
See also this question: How to deal with files with a name longer than 259 characters? there is also a good article linked

Move Directory to another directory using c# [duplicate]

Why is it that File.Move(sourceFileName, destFileName) works fine when the source file and destination files are in different partitions, but Directory.Move(sourceDirName, destDirName) don't? It throws
System.IO.IOException: "Source and destination path must have
identical roots. Move will not work across volumes."
I even tried to create a DirectoryInfo instance and use the MoveTo(destDirName) method but without success.
Am I missing something? Do I really have to implement a "move" functionality myself? (the directory I want to move is very large btw).

You should Use Copy Function followed by a remove. As Move only works in the same drive.
Directory.Move has a condition that states that :
IO Exception will be thrown if an attempt was made to move a directory to a different volume.

Another option is, to add a reference to the Microsoft.VisualBasic namespace and use the MoveDirectory method, which can move across volumes.
Microsoft.VisualBasic.FileIO.FileSystem.MoveDirectory(sourceDirName, destDirName);

Although this is not a Vb.Net question but I found no one mentioned this method so I think might help... Only you need to convert it to C# if needed.
Code:
My.Computer.FileSystem.MoveDirectory(SrcDir,DestDir)
This works on different volume seamlessly/ per my experience.

Based on the posts "Copy a directory to a different drive" and "Non-recursive way to get all files in a directory and its subdirectories in Java", I wrote this non-recursive method and it works fine:
public static void Move(string source, string target)
{
if (!Directory.Exists(source))
{
throw new System.IO.DirectoryNotFoundException("Source directory couldn't be found.");
}
if (Directory.Exists(target))
{
throw new System.IO.IOException("Target directory already exists.");
}
DirectoryInfo sourceInfo = Directory.CreateDirectory(source);
DirectoryInfo targetInfo = Directory.CreateDirectory(target);
if (sourceInfo.FullName == targetInfo.FullName)
{
throw new System.IO.IOException("Source and target directories are the same.");
}
Stack<DirectoryInfo> sourceDirectories = new Stack<DirectoryInfo>();
sourceDirectories.Push(sourceInfo);
Stack<DirectoryInfo> targetDirectories = new Stack<DirectoryInfo>();
targetDirectories.Push(targetInfo);
while (sourceDirectories.Count > 0)
{
DirectoryInfo sourceDirectory = sourceDirectories.Pop();
DirectoryInfo targetDirectory = targetDirectories.Pop();
foreach (FileInfo file in sourceDirectory.GetFiles())
{
file.CopyTo(Path.Combine(targetDirectory.FullName, file.Name), overwrite: true);
}
foreach(DirectoryInfo subDirectory in sourceDirectory.GetDirectories())
{
sourceDirectories.Push(subDirectory);
targetDirectories.Push(targetDirectory.CreateSubdirectory(subDirectory.Name));
}
}
sourceInfo.Delete(true);
}

You can also p/invoke SHFileOperation which is the same function Windows Explorer uses to move directories around. It will either perform a true move or recursive-copy-then-delete, as appropriate.
It can also show the same progress UI as explorer, just by setting a flag.

I know this post is a little old... but there is a way around this! Don't try and move the directory, but zip it up and move it as a File.Move(src,dest); and you can then extract it and there you have it!

I had same problem in VB.NET and instead of "Directory.Move" I used MoveFolder with "FileSystemObject".
You can preserve creation dates with this method.
Scripting.FileSystemObject oFSO = new Scripting.FileSystemObject();
oFSO.MoveFolder(sourceDirName, destDirName)

i have this problem to and i like to solve it in this way
string startPath = #".\start";
string zipPath = #".\result.zip";
string extractPath = #".\extract";
ZipFile.CreateFromDirectory(startPath, zipPath);
ZipFile.ExtractToDirectory(zipPath, extractPath);

Using .NET ZipArchive to zip entire directories AS well as extra info

I inherited some code that makes use of ZipArchive to save some information from the database. It uses BinaryFormatter to do this. When you look at the zip file with 7-zip (for example), you see a couple of folders and a .txt file. All is working well. I simply want to modify the code to also have a folder in the ZipArchive called "temp" that consists of files and folders under C:\temp. Is there an easy way to add a entry (ZipArchiveEntry?) that consist of an entire folder or the disc? I saw "CreateEntryFromFile" in the member methods of ZipArchive, but no CreateEntryFromDirectory. Or perhaps there's some other simple way to do it? Anyone have example code? I should say that C:\temp could have variable number of files and directories (that have child directories and files, etc.) Must I enumerate them somehow, create my own directories use CreateEntryFromFile? Any help is appreciated.
Similarly, when I read the ZipArchive, I want to take the stuff related to C:\temp and just dump it in a directory (like C:\temp_old)
Thanks,
Dave

The answer by user1469065 in Zip folder in C# worked for me. user1469065 shows how to get all the files/directories in the directory (using some cool "yield" statements) and then do the serialization. For completeness, I did add the code to deserialize as user1469065 suggested (at least I think I did it the way he suggested).
private static void ReadTempFileStuff(ZipArchive archive) // adw
{
var sessionArchives = archive.Entries.Where(x => x.FullName.StartsWith(#"temp_directory_contents")).ToArray();
if (sessionArchives != null && sessionArchives.Length > 0)
{
foreach (ZipArchiveEntry entry in sessionArchives)
{
FileInfo info = new FileInfo(#"C:\" + entry.FullName);
if (!info.Directory.Exists)
{
Directory.CreateDirectory(info.DirectoryName);
}
entry.ExtractToFile(#"C:\" + entry.FullName,true);
}
}
}

XNA ContentLoadException when loading textures in the main project using a load command in a DLL

I have just taken it upon myself to try out programming a very rudimentary game engine, starting by just displaying simple tiles in a 2d world in XNA. This is my first time writing a DLL, and it was all going well until I tried to write a LoadAll function for ContentManager, which has led to the problem I am having now. I am getting a ContentLoadException, even though the files clearly exist as otherwise the program would not get to the content loading stage.
The XNB files definitely exist, and the Content.RootDirectory has been set. I have been through every question like this I can find both here and on other sites and cannot find any solution. If anyone could help out I'd be eternally grateful.
public static Dictionary<String, T> LoadAll<T>(this ContentManager Content, string directory)
{
DirectoryInfo dir = new DirectoryInfo(Content.RootDirectory + "/" + directory);
if (!dir.Exists)
{
throw new DirectoryNotFoundException();
}
Dictionary<String, T> result = new Dictionary<string, T>();
FileInfo[] files = dir.GetFiles();
foreach (FileInfo file in files)
{
string key = Path.GetFileNameWithoutExtension(file.Name);
result[key] = Content.Load<T>(dir.ToString() + "/" + key);
}
return result;
}
Obviously I'm getting the error at the Content.Load method, where I get
"Error loading "Content\Tiles\bricktile". File not found."
I found this code here, but even rewriting it into list form I get the same error. The weird part is that the Error Loading "path to file" shows the correct path to an xnb file that definitely exists. If anyone wants the source for my DLL, I can easily upload that.
Thanks!
Edit: Should really have said how I call this:
textures = Content.LoadAll<Texture2D>(tilesFolder);

You pass the wrong path to the Content.Load<>() method. dir.ToString() will return the complete path (including the content's root directory). But you need the path without the root directory:
result[key] = Content.Load<T>(directory + "/" + key);

Get attributes of all files under a directory while accessing the directory only

I'm trying to write a function in C# that gets a directory path as parameter and returns a dictionary where the keys are the files directly under that directory and the values are their last modification time.
This is easy to do with Directory.GetFiles() and then File.GetLastWriteTime(). However, this means that every file must be accessed, which is too slow for my needs.
Is there a way to do this while accessing just the directory? Does the file system even support this kind of requirement?
Edit, after reading some answers:
Thank you guys, you are all saying pretty much the same - use FileInfo object. Still, it is just as slow to use Directory.GetFiles() (or Directory.EnumerateFiles()) to get those objects, and I suspect that getting them requires access to every file. If the file system keeps last modification time of its files in the files themselves only, there can't be a way to extract that info without file access. Is this the case here? Do GetFiles() and EnumerateFiles() of DirectoryInfo access every file or get their info from the directory entry? I know that if I would have wanted to get just the file names, I could do this with the Directory class without accessing every file. But getting attributes seems trickier...
Edit, following henk's response:
it seems that it really is faster to use FileInfo Object. I created the following test:
static void Main(string[] args)
{
Console.WriteLine(DateTime.Now);
foreach (string file in Directory.GetFiles(#"\\169.254.78.161\dir"))
{
DateTime x = File.GetLastWriteTime(file);
}
Console.WriteLine(DateTime.Now);
DirectoryInfo dirInfo2 = new DirectoryInfo(#"\\169.254.78.161\dir");
var files2 = from f in dirInfo2.EnumerateFiles()
select f;
foreach (FileInfo file in files2)
{
DateTime x = file.LastWriteTime;
}
Console.WriteLine(DateTime.Now);
}
For about 800 files, I usually get something like:
31/08/2011 17:14:48
31/08/2011 17:14:51
31/08/2011 17:14:52

I didn't do any timings but your best bet is:
DirectoryInfo di = new DirectoryInfo(myPath);
FileInfo[] files = di.GetFiles();
I think all the FileInfo attributes are available in the directory file records so this should (could) require the minimum I/O.

The only other thing I can think of is using the FileInfo-Class. As far as I can see this might help you or it might read the file as well (Read Permissions are required)