C# – How to get the current project directory from C# code when creating a custom MSBuild task

cmsbuild

Instead of running an external program with its path hardcoded, I would like to get the current Project Dir. I'm calling an external program using a process in the custom task.

How would I do that? AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory just gives me the location of VS 2008.

Best Answer

using System;
using System.IO;

// This will get the current WORKING directory (i.e. \bin\Debug)
string workingDirectory = Environment.CurrentDirectory;
// or: Directory.GetCurrentDirectory() gives the same result

// This will get the current PROJECT bin directory (ie ../bin/)
string projectDirectory = Directory.GetParent(workingDirectory).Parent.FullName;

// This will get the current PROJECT directory
string projectDirectory = Directory.GetParent(workingDirectory).Parent.Parent.FullName;

Related Solutions

C# – How to get the index of the current iteration of a foreach loop

Ian Mercer posted a similar solution as this on Phil Haack's blog:

foreach (var item in Model.Select((value, i) => new { i, value }))
{
    var value = item.value;
    var index = item.i;
}

This gets you the item (item.value) and its index (item.i) by using this overload of LINQ's Select:

the second parameter of the function [inside Select] represents the index of the source element.

The new { i, value } is creating a new anonymous object.

Heap allocations can be avoided by using ValueTuple if you're using C# 7.0 or later:

foreach (var item in Model.Select((value, i) => ( value, i )))
{
    var value = item.value;
    var index = item.i;
}

You can also eliminate the item. by using automatic destructuring:

<ol>
foreach ((MyType value, Int32 i) in Model.Select((value, i) => ( value, i )))
{
    <li id="item_@i">@value</li>
}
</ol>

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

Related Solutions

C# – How to get the index of the current iteration of a foreach loop

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

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