C# .NET – how to determine if directory is writable, with or without UAC

cnetpermissionsuac

I'm working on a piece of software that needs to copy a file to a given directory on the filesystem. It needs to work on both UAC-aware OSs (Vista, 7) as well as XP. To get around the issue of writing to a directory where UAC elevation is required, the app actually kicks off another process with a manifest that states that UAC is required. This generates the prompt and then does the copy when the user confirms.

From what I can see, a directory can have three different logical permission states – writeable without UAC elevation, writeable with UAC elevation and not writeable.

My question is this: For a given directory, how do I reliably determine whether the current user can copy (and potentially overwrite) a file to that directory, and if I can, how do I determine if UAC elevation is required?

On XP, this could just be as simple as checking whether the 'Allow Write' permission is granted, but on Vista / 7, there are directories where this permission isn't granted, but this action is still possible with UAC.

Best Answer

We have a method for WriteAccess on files, you can probably adapt it for Directories (Directory.GetAccessControl and so on)

    /// <summary> Checks for write access for the given file.
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="fileName">The filename.</param>
    /// <returns>true, if write access is allowed, otherwise false</returns>
    public static bool WriteAccess(string fileName)
    {
        if ((File.GetAttributes(fileName) & FileAttributes.ReadOnly) != 0)
            return false;

        // Get the access rules of the specified files (user groups and user names that have access to the file)
        var rules = File.GetAccessControl(fileName).GetAccessRules(true, true, typeof(System.Security.Principal.SecurityIdentifier));

        // Get the identity of the current user and the groups that the user is in.
        var groups = WindowsIdentity.GetCurrent().Groups;
        string sidCurrentUser = WindowsIdentity.GetCurrent().User.Value;

        // Check if writing to the file is explicitly denied for this user or a group the user is in.
        if (rules.OfType<FileSystemAccessRule>().Any(r => (groups.Contains(r.IdentityReference) || r.IdentityReference.Value == sidCurrentUser) && r.AccessControlType == AccessControlType.Deny && (r.FileSystemRights & FileSystemRights.WriteData) == FileSystemRights.WriteData))
            return false;

        // Check if writing is allowed
        return rules.OfType<FileSystemAccessRule>().Any(r => (groups.Contains(r.IdentityReference) || r.IdentityReference.Value == sidCurrentUser) && r.AccessControlType == AccessControlType.Allow && (r.FileSystemRights & FileSystemRights.WriteData) == FileSystemRights.WriteData);
    }

Hope this helps.

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C# – How to escape braces (curly brackets) in a format string in .NET

For you to output foo {1, 2, 3} you have to do something like:

string t = "1, 2, 3";
string v = String.Format(" foo {{{0}}}", t);

To output a { you use {{ and to output a } you use }}.

Or now, you can also use C# string interpolation like this (a feature available in C# 6.0)

Escaping brackets: String interpolation $(""). It is new feature in C# 6.0.

var inVal = "1, 2, 3";
var outVal = $" foo {{{inVal}}}";
// The output will be:  foo {1, 2, 3}

C# – How to create an Excel (.XLS and .XLSX) file in C# without installing Microsoft Office

You can use a library called ExcelLibrary. It's a free, open source library posted on Google Code:

ExcelLibrary

This looks to be a port of the PHP ExcelWriter that you mentioned above. It will not write to the new .xlsx format yet, but they are working on adding that functionality in.

It's very simple, small and easy to use. Plus it has a DataSetHelper that lets you use DataSets and DataTables to easily work with Excel data.

ExcelLibrary seems to still only work for the older Excel format (.xls files), but may be adding support in the future for newer 2007/2010 formats.

You can also use EPPlus, which works only for Excel 2007/2010 format files (.xlsx files). There's also NPOI which works with both.

There are a few known bugs with each library as noted in the comments. In all, EPPlus seems to be the best choice as time goes on. It seems to be more actively updated and documented as well.

Also, as noted by @АртёмЦарионов below, EPPlus has support for Pivot Tables and ExcelLibrary may have some support (Pivot table issue in ExcelLibrary)

Here are a couple links for quick reference:
ExcelLibrary - GNU Lesser GPL
EPPlus - GNU (LGPL) - No longer maintained
EPPlus 5 - Polyform Noncommercial - Starting May 2020
NPOI - Apache License

Here some example code for ExcelLibrary:

Here is an example taking data from a database and creating a workbook from it. Note that the ExcelLibrary code is the single line at the bottom:

//Create the data set and table
DataSet ds = new DataSet("New_DataSet");
DataTable dt = new DataTable("New_DataTable");

//Set the locale for each
ds.Locale = System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture;
dt.Locale = System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture;

//Open a DB connection (in this example with OleDB)
OleDbConnection con = new OleDbConnection(dbConnectionString);
con.Open();

//Create a query and fill the data table with the data from the DB
string sql = "SELECT Whatever FROM MyDBTable;";
OleDbCommand cmd = new OleDbCommand(sql, con);
OleDbDataAdapter adptr = new OleDbDataAdapter();

adptr.SelectCommand = cmd;
adptr.Fill(dt);
con.Close();

//Add the table to the data set
ds.Tables.Add(dt);

//Here's the easy part. Create the Excel worksheet from the data set
ExcelLibrary.DataSetHelper.CreateWorkbook("MyExcelFile.xls", ds);

Creating the Excel file is as easy as that. You can also manually create Excel files, but the above functionality is what really impressed me.

Best Answer

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