Question

I have a button in my winform app. I would like that when the user clicks this button it will open the xml file from c:\myfile.xml in visual studio. now i don’t know where the user intalled vs and which version he is using.
if this is impossible to know then how can I open it in notepad?
the reason i’m not using webbrowser for this task is because the user needs to edit the content of the file.

I’m using c#.

Thanks.

Answer 1

string filePath = @"d:\test.xml";
//Open in notepad
System.Diagnostics.Process.Start("notepad", filepath);
//Open in visual studio
System.Diagnostics.Process.Start("devenv", filepath);

Note that this only works when the program can be found in PATH environment variable, you’ll have to catch exceptions and try with other applications… something like this :

bool TryStart(string application, string arguments)
{
  try
  {
    using (Process.Start(application, arguments))
      return true;
  }
  catch (Win32Exception)
  {
    return false;
  }
  catch (FileNotFoundException)
  {
    return false;
  }
}

void OpenXml(string filePath)
{
  if (!TryStart("devenv", filePath) && !TryStart("notepad", filePath))
      using (Process.Start(filePath))
      { }
}