Question

I have an excel file that I want to embed in my C# assembly. I have changed the build action of the XLSX file to “Embedded Resource”.

During runtime, I have to retrieve this XLSX file from the assembly.

Assembly assembly = Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly();
StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(assembly.GetManifestResourceStream("AssemblyName.Output.xlsx"), true);
StreamWriter sw = new StreamWriter(strPath);
sw.Write(sr.ReadToEnd());
sr.Dispose();
sw.Dispose();
System.Diagnostics.Process.Start(strPath);

As expected, this fails for the XLSX file since it is a binary data. This could works well with a text file.

I tried binary read/write, but I am not able to get the code running. Thoughts?

Answer 1

var assembly = Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly();

// don't forget to do appropriate exception handling arund opening and writing file
using(Stream input = assembly.GetManifestResourceStream("AssemblyName.Output.xlsx"))
using(Stream output = File.Open("output.xlsx"))
{
     input.CopyTo(output);
}