Hi all:

This has got to be a simple no-brainer, but has me stumped for 2 days.

I have a .txt file in my website's App_Data folder that I need to open and read/write inter-eactively while a user is accessing the site. In production the entire website including this file will live at the server.

I have not been able to find a way to get programmable access to the file and that's the problem.

1. There is no App.Path available.
2. CurPath points to the IDE, not the app's child files.
3. Using a tilde in a path string does not work.
4. Using the file name in a path string does not work either.
5. I've tried, File, FileInfo, Directory, Drive, DriveInfo objects.
   Nothing works.

Anyone have a suggestion on how to read/write progrmmatically to this asp.net 2 website app file?

Thanks for your ideas.

VictorVictor

hi there.. I cann't find an example here.. but did you try with server.mappath??

you can use that to get the actual path to a file doing something like:

server.mappath("app_data")

HTH

Gonzalo

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Gonzalo:

Thanks for the idea.

I tried your suggestion and got an error message as follows:
'server.mappath' is not declared or the module containing it is not loaded in the debugging path.

Basically what I did was put a breakpoint on a line of code in the code module (web page) where I need to read that file, and then asked the Immediate Debugging window to show me what server.mappath had in it.

VV

hi there..

well.. you can access the server object directly from a web page, but not inside a module...
if you want that, you have to pass the server object to the function in the module...

I understood you right????

HTH

Gonzalo

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Alternatively, you can use

HttpContext.Current.Session in your modules / classes.

http://www.syncfusion.com/FAQ/aspnet/WEB_c9c.aspx#q244q

Imar
---------------------------------------
Imar Spaanjaars
http://Imar.Spaanjaars.Com
Everyone is unique, except for me.
Author of ASP.NET 2.0 Instant Results and Beginning Dreamweaver MX / MX 2004
Want to be my colleague? Then check out this post.

Gonzalo: Thanks for the update. Yes you understand correctly. I was hoping for a simple answer -- not always possible. I'll have to look further into passing access to the httpcontext object from an aspx page to a class instance object. Exactly how to do that is the problem.

Imar: Thanks too. I have spent over 3 hours with my app's httpcontext object, the current object and the session object and a large number of all these objects' properties. Still no joy.

This is such a simple thing and tons of developers must have been here before. I'm perplexed as to why this is giving me such a problem.

VV

A bit more about this problem. I can think of several ways AROUND the problem. For example, an xml file as a local resource, a fixed array, a class. There are many more ways, but I wish to find a way to access a simple .txt file in the site's App_Data folder (or some other app folder) because there will be times in the future and other apps where the same problem will come up. VV

I said Session, but I meant Server. Sorry.... ;)

Can you post the relevant bits of code and describe the site's structure? E.g. where you call this code, where its class file resides and so on.

This should just work as expected....

Imar
---------------------------------------
Imar Spaanjaars
http://Imar.Spaanjaars.Com
Everyone is unique, except for me.
Author of ASP.NET 2.0 Instant Results and Beginning Dreamweaver MX / MX 2004
Want to be my colleague? Then check out this post.

Imar and Gonzalo:

Thanks guys for the help. Problem solved.

Below is a small VB function that uses the current httpcontext properties to get a path to a website file containing the .txt file I need to read. The nice thing about the line using the httpcontext is that it will work wherever on the server, the file winds up.

The purpose of the function is to test that a naughty user does not enter a nasty word in an input text field. I have more functions in a class to test for more bad input, this is for just the nasty words possibility.

    Public Function IsBadWord(ByVal sWord As String) As Boolean
        Dim bReturnValue As Boolean = False
        Dim sBadWordsFilePath As String
        sBadWordsFilePath = HttpContext.Current.ApplicationInstance.Server.Map Path("~/App_Data/BadWords.txt")
        Dim reader As StreamReader = New StreamReader(sBadWordsFilePath)
        Try
            Do
                If reader.ReadLine = sWord Then
                    bReturnValue = True
                    Exit Do
                End If
            Loop Until reader.Peek = -1
        Catch ex As Exception

        Finally
            reader.Close()
        End Try
        Return bReturnValue
    End Function
------------------------
Thanks again.

VictorVictor