Question

I have here a textbox that should accept a file path. How should I validate (by a button click) whether the given path file do exists or not?

For example, “C:MyDocs\sample.txt” should be invalid because it is not actually existing in my local drive and there’s no ‘\’ after ‘C:’..

i have tried using this:

FileInfo fi = new FileInfo(fName);
 if (fi.Exists)
    //do something

but it doesn’t satisfy my issue..can anyone advise?

Answer 1

use Uri.IsWellFormedUriString(path, UriKind.Absolute); to check if the path is valid (beside if the file exists)

read here for Uri validation:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.uri.iswellformeduristring.aspx

Sample:

bool isValid = Uri.IsWellFormedUriString(fName, UriKind.Absolute) &&
               File.Exists(fName);

if the result is true, you can know for sure that the file format supplied by the user is valid and the file exists @ the file system.