Deploying c# application issues

Question

I have a application with one folder which i added by right clicking the project, selecting add folder. Inside this folder i have xml files which are set to build action:content, copy to output directory: copy if newer (i have tried setting to embedded resource) As well as this i have a few text files and so on.

In my bin/debug output directory i have the exe, the folder with the xml, the stand alone .txt files and so on. My problem is, if i send the exe to my friend to try he always gets an exception thrown.

Say he puts the exe on the desktop, my programme at some point reads the filenames of the xml files in the folder. It uses the following code to do so

String[] filePaths = Directory.GetFiles(@"DataSources\");

I assume that because of this, when the exe runs from the desktop, it expect the folder of .xml files to be in the same place? I have the same type of exception when trying to read the .txt files too. What am i doing wrong here?

Thanks for your time

Answer 1

Have you tried something like: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.windows.forms.application.executablepath.aspx or http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.environment.currentdirectory.aspx ?

So Directory.GetFiles(environment.currentdirectory + @"\\DataSources\\");

Answer 2

When reading from files using relative paths you get the one relative to the applications current directory. tip: In C# you can see what directory that is using Environment.CurrentDirectory .

So if you create a shortcut on your desktop, you need to make sure you right click the shortcut and set its "Start in"-folder to the directory of your application. That way its current directory will be set when its started and relative paths will be relative to that path and not the path of the shortcut.

If you actually moved the exe file to the desktop you also need to move any resources that it needs, so if it wants a folder named "datasources" you would have to move that folder as well, or set the current directory when you start the application.