C# – Check whether a path is valid

cnetpathwinapi

I am just wondering: I am looking for a way to validate if a given path is valid.
(Note: I do not want to check if a file is existing! I only want to proof the validity of the path – So if a file could possibly exists at the location).

Problem is, I can't find anything in the .Net API.
Due to the many formats and locations that Windows supports, I'd rather use something MS-native.

Since the function should be able to check against:

Relative Paths (./)

Absolute Paths (c:\tmp)

UNC-Pathes (\some-pc\c$)

NTFS-Limitations like the full path 1024 chars – If I am not mistaken exceeding the path will make a file inaccessible for many
internal Windows functions. Renaming it with Explorer still works

Volume GUID Paths : "\?\Volume{GUID}\somefile.foo

Does anyone have a function like this?

Best Answer

Try Uri.IsWellFormedUriString():

The string is not correctly escaped.

  http://www.example.com/path???/file name

The string is an absolute Uri that represents an implicit file Uri.
```
  c:\\directory\filename
```
The string is an absolute URI that is missing a slash before the path.
```
  file://c:/directory/filename
```
The string contains unescaped backslashes even if they are treated as forward slashes.
```
  http:\\host/path/file
```
The string represents a hierarchical absolute Uri and does not contain "://".
```
  www.example.com/path/file
```
The parser for the Uri.Scheme indicates that the original string was not well-formed.
```
  The example depends on the scheme of the URI.
```

Related Solutions

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>>> import os
>>> os.path.abspath("mydir/myfile.txt")
'C:/example/cwd/mydir/myfile.txt'

Also works if it is already an absolute path:

>>> import os
>>> os.path.abspath("C:/example/cwd/mydir/myfile.txt")
'C:/example/cwd/mydir/myfile.txt'

C# – How to get the path of the assembly the code is in

I've defined the following property as we use this often in unit testing.

public static string AssemblyDirectory
{
    get
    {
        string codeBase = Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().CodeBase;
        UriBuilder uri = new UriBuilder(codeBase);
        string path = Uri.UnescapeDataString(uri.Path);
        return Path.GetDirectoryName(path);
    }
}

The Assembly.Location property sometimes gives you some funny results when using NUnit (where assemblies run from a temporary folder), so I prefer to use CodeBase which gives you the path in URI format, then UriBuild.UnescapeDataString removes the File:// at the beginning, and GetDirectoryName changes it to the normal windows format.

Best Answer

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