Question

I have created a windows service in c# .Net 4.0.

In VS it works great, I have built the project and installed the exe as a service which does run.

I have found that when operating as a service the application does not reference application configuration files I have placed in the same directory as the service exe.

If I strongly type the full file path in code there is no problem, however this is not an ideal solution as users could install things where ever they like.

How can I make the application reference (look for) files local to the EXE and not I assume where the .Net service wrapper is located.

Nothing seems to be helpful on google.

Example

Does Work:

var config =
                    ClassLib.XmlInterface.DeserializeConfiguration(
                        "C:\\Users\\Damo\\Documents\\Visual Studio 2010\\Projects\\FileDownloadService\\FileDownloadService\\bin\\Debug\\config.xml");

Does not work: (dispute been local to the EXE)

var config =
                    ClassLib.XmlInterface.DeserializeConfiguration(
                        "config.xml");

Answer 1

There are a couple of ways to resolve this.

You could create an environment variable, and read the path from it. This is kind of kludgy, if you don’t have a Setup application, and it’s prone to breakage if users muck with their settings. But it will work if you do it correctly.

If you have a setup application, you could also store the path to your executable in the Registry, and read it at runtime.

Or, you can try retrieving the path to your assembly at runtime using something like this:

    public static string GetCoreAssemblyPathRoot()
    {
        const string AssemblyName = "MyAssemblyName,";
        var loadedAssemblies = AppDomain.CurrentDomain.GetAssemblies();
        var path = (from assembly in loadedAssemblies
                    where assembly.FullName.StartsWith(AssemblyName)
                    select Path.GetDirectoryName(assembly.Location))
                   .FirstOrDefault();
        if (path == null)
        {
            return null;
        }
        //  The last part of the path is "\bin". Remove it, and return the remainder.
        var index = path.IndexOf("\\bin\\");
        return index == -1
                   ? path
                   : path.Substring(0, index);
    }