有没有办法动态定位我当前 c# Winforms 应用程序的子文件夹/子文件的路径更改？

Question

Is it possible to dynamically locate a certain folder/file?

For example, let's say I have got a configuration file that my application obviously needs to be able to read. Currently, the path to my configuration file is hardcoded. However, let's say when I deploy the application, the client decides to move that configuration file in some other random directory. Can I make it so my application will be able to locate that random directory without manually changing it in the source code?

Another example, I also have a Logs folder which stores my log files to which I need to be writing constantly. Same as the configuration file, if the client decides to change the Logs folder somewhere else, I need to be able to dynamically locate it from within my code.

Thanks for any future suggestions.

Answer 1

A good way to approach this problem is to use relative paths in your code. Your application needs to somehow get paths to folders / files it calls for. In case that relocating folder with Logs is a priority for you and you are willing to have a file with path (which cannot be relocated):

/filePaths.something

Then you can store (be it in plaintext, json, xml, binary or whatever) paths to the other files / folders. Eg:

{
  "logsFolder": "C:/Some/Random/Folders",
  "anotherFile": "D:/Client/Can/Edit/This"
}

You can also try scanning entire filesystem but there are several drawbacks:

• time consuming process
• probably will return multiple hits when scanning for a folder named Logs (non unique name)

There are probably milion of milions files on your client PC, scanning recursively just for folders will speed this up a bit but still it's gonna be very lenghty.

Another approach might be conneting your app to a database but that really doesn't differ from the first option described above. All in all you'll probably need to go some mid way to satisfy both technical limitations and your clients.