How to get the relative path (folder the executable was launched in) as a string in C#?
Well, lets say you launch an application and you want to know the relative path.
In C# you can use the System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location value. I have searched through many online sites that tell different ways, and some of the more experienced C# developers say that some of the other ways are not always accurate or won’t always work, while this one should always work.
So if you make a class and add two String class variables, you can use this function to populate them: Path.GetDirectoryName(Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location)
private void GetPaths()
{
mExecutablePath = System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location;
mExecutableRootDirectory = System.IO.Path.GetDirectoryName(mExecutablePath);
}
Ok, so I like to make sure any newbie can pull this off, so the whole file with it working (using a New WPF project):
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;
using System.Windows;
using System.Windows.Controls;
using System.Windows.Data;
using System.Windows.Documents;
using System.Windows.Input;
using System.Windows.Media;
using System.Windows.Media.Imaging;
using System.Windows.Navigation;
using System.Windows.Shapes;
namespace TestPath
{
/// <summary>
/// Interaction logic for Window1.xaml
/// </summary>
public partial class Window1 : Window
{
DataSet mDataSet;
String mExecutablePath;
String mExecutableRootDirectory;
public Window1()
{
GetPaths();
InitializeComponent();
}
private void GetPaths()
{
mExecutablePath = System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location;
mExecutableRootDirectory = System.IO.Path.GetDirectoryName(mExecutablePath);
}
}
}


I am not sure this existed when I first wrote this post, but you can now do this as well:
The above options didn't work in an IIS hosted WCF service.