Question

I’m trying to use an ‘SQL Express’ (or is it SQL Compact?) .MDF file as the datasource on a simple website using a Chart control.

Locally, it works great; but only if the ‘AttachDbFilename’ has the full path. Am I messing something up, or does it really need to be full path? If so – how do I accomplish this without using something like Server.MapPath()?

Answer 1

<add name="LocalSqlServer"
     connectionString="data source=.\SQLEXPRESS;Integrated Security=SSPI;AttachDBFilename=|DataDirectory|aspnetdb.mdf;User Instance=true"

By default, the |DataDirectory| variable will be expanded as follow:

• For applications placed in a directory on the user machine, this will be the app’s (.exe) folder.
• For apps running under ClickOnce, this will be a special data folder created by ClickOnce
• For Web apps, this will be the App_Data folder

You can programmatically set DataDirectory by calling AppDomain.CurrentDomain.SetData("DataDirectory", newpath)