C# – Get temp folder path and create a temp file

You can use Path.GetTempPath() to get the user’s temp folder path. Here’s an example: I’m running this in Windows, so it outputs my temp folder path: Path.GetTempPath() gets the temp folder path by checking environment variables (TMP, TEMP, USERPROFILE). It falls back to returning the system temp folder. Create a temp file Once you have … Read more

C# – How to create a file and write to it

There are a few ways to create a file and write to it using the .NET File API (in System.IO). The simplest way is to use high-level methods like File.WriteAllText() and File.WriteAllLines(), specifying the file path and string(s) to write to the file. Here’s an example of using these (and their async equivalents): These high-level … Read more

C# – How to delete a file

You can use File.Delete() (in System.IO) to delete a file by specifying its relative or absolute path. Here’s an example: Note: Unlike other methods in the File API, there’s no async version of File.Delete(). If the specified file exists and the permissions are right, then File.Delete() deletes the file as expected. If there’s a problem, … Read more

C# – Unit testing code that does File IO

If your code does File IO, such as reading text from a file, then it’s dependent on the file system. This is an external dependency. In order to make the unit tests fast and reliable, you can mock out the external dependencies. To mock out the file system dependency, you can wrap the File IO … Read more

C# – How to use FileSystemWatcher

You can use the FileSystemWatcher class to detect file system changes, such as when a file is created, deleted, modified, or renamed. When a change happens, it raises an event that you can handle. This is an event-based alternative to polling for file changes. In this article, I’ll show how to use FileSystemWatcher to detect … Read more