How can I make a program finds it's own location to save and read a file?

Question

I'm trying to write an xml file and attach it to an email. It works great if I give it a path to my personal documents folder(i.e. C:\users\myname\Documents\Test.xml), but if I try to change it to something like C:\\Test.xml, I get the following error message:

UnauthorizedAccessException was Unhandled Access to the path 'C:\Test.xml' is denied.

(I can't post pictures apparently)

What would be a good workaround for this?

Answer 1

To get the directory in which the application is launched you could use AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory

On Admin privileges:

1. Check if the user has launched the application using Run as Administrator. In this case user should have admin privileges to write..Here is sample code..

       var identity = WindowsIdentity.GetCurrent();
       var principal = new WindowsPrincipal(identity);
       if (principal.IsInRole(WindowsBuiltInRole.Administrator))
       {
           //Application is Running as ADMIN
       }
   

2. You could always write it to you TEMP or LOCAL APP DATA folder..

       var temp = Path.GetTempPath();
   
       //e.g: C:\Users\UserName\AppData\Local\Temp\test.xml
       var testFilePath = Path.Combine(temp, "test.xml");
   

Answer 2

System.IO.Path.GetDirectoryName(System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly(‌​).CodeBase)

see How can I get the application's path in a .NET console application?

Answer 3

Program folder is not always allowed to write, use %TEMP% folder instead.