I'm pretty new to VB so I need a bit of help with some coding.
I made a program that should download a certain file to what ever directory the user wants, but now i want my program to run that certain file but i don't know how to do it since the user used his/her own directory.
Like i want the program to run that certain file no matter where its saved, how do i do that?
I do know this code:
System.Diagnostics.Process.Start("C:\")
but this doesnt really work since i have to put in a directory before i use the program.
You can get the path of the SFD by using filename.
Dim Path as String
Path = SaveFileDialog.FileName
Then run the file.
System.Diagnostics.Process.Start(Path)
Found another way of doing it,
I just used:
file.open(textbox1.text)
And made it take the text forom the the other textbox the user browsed the file to
Related
I'm starting to play around with FileStream to make a text document. When you do this, you have to clarify a path. Is there a way to create the text document in the folder the EXE file is in?
(I'm asking this because this program is meant to be downloaded, so I think I can't clarify a path specific to my computer)
Thank you!
You're right, you can't bake a path into your program that is specific to your computer because then it won't work on the user's computer
Jimi makes the wise point that often programs are installed to C:\Program Files or similar and it's not automatically possible to write to subfolders in there - you'll have to get into asking the user for permission (Elevation) .. headache
Better to decide what you want the path for:
If you need a temporary path to e.g. download something to then throw it away you can call Path.GetTempFilename() or Path.GetTempPath() - the former creates a 0 byte file with a random name in the user's temp folder, and returns the path. The latter gives you the path to the temp folder so you can create your own file
If the file is to have some permanence, such as the user saving his work, you should ask the user for it. SaveFileDialog and FolderBrowserDialog are two things you can drop on your windows form and then call ShowDialog() on to show the uer a UI where they pick a path. After they OK or Cancel, you check if they OK'd or Cancel and proceed using the dialog's Filename or SelectedPath respectively (if they OK'd)
When you're writing your files it's easier not to use FileStream unless you really need to seek in the file etc. Easier to just:
System.IO.File.WriteAllText(path here, contents here)
If you have to write the contents of a string variable to a file
The best way to create a text file, would be to use CreateText method. It will create a file besides the executable program file. You can go the following way.
Dim sw as StreamWriter = File.CreateText("myfile.txt")
Dim str as String = "Your text"
sw.Write(str)
sw.Flush()
sw.Close()
Try to make my app read the ms-access database from shortcut of my database it failed to read, so try to change the location of database dynamically ( there is an option in the app to move the database to drop-box folder and create a shortcut to that database in app folder )
try to make an shortcut to the moved ms-database
the app to read the database or to change the location of database dynamically
First of all, you should create a folder with a clear name in your VB.Net application path, namely inside the project Debug folder, let's name that folder as "MyProjFiles", so it will be in this path: ProjectFolderName\bin\Debug\MyProjFiles
Put your whole projects files inside our lovely folder MyProjFiles, including all types of your attachments: database, images, sounds, files, etc.
Call your database or whatever of those attachments files in addition to our \MyProjFiles\ using this method: My.Computer.FileSystem.CurrentDirectory & "\MyProjFiles\YourFilesPathHere.EXT".
Now, the whole path will be such as this string: "C:\CurrentUserNam\RootFolder\ProjectFolderName\bin\Debug\MyProjFiles\YourFilesPathHere.EXT"
For great practical example of this, supposuply let's open our MSAccessDB.accdb which is already copied into our project folder \MyProjFiles\ by this code directly:
System.Diagnostics.Process.Start(My.Computer.FileSystem.CurrentDirectory() & "\MyProjFiles\MSAccessDB.accdb")
The result will be simply opening our database which called "MSAccessDB.accdb"
Or open some pdf files such as this line:
System.Diagnostics.Process.Start(My.Computer.FileSystem.CurrentDirector() & "\MyProjFiles\MyPdfFile.pdf")
and so on.
I hope this can help you all brothers.
Best ^_^ Regards.
You should read this link.
It explains how to read the information you need to give the access Datareader something to do.
.NET read binary contents of .lnk file
Maybe this is enough, so you don't need to copy anything.
I'm using the following the code to open a file that resides elsewhere on the computer:
System.Diagnostics.Process.Start(PathToOpen)
Where PathToOpen is the full address to the file I wish to open. This appears to work as intended for any file type that has an application installed that can open the file.
Whilst this works OK, if the file is on a networked drive, I want my VB.Net code to check if the file is currently in use, if so display a message. Currently what happens is if a second user tries to open the file, it opens read-only (a word file for example) which is handled outside of my application. I want to intercept before the file is opened and stop the process there.
Is this possible at all?
You are basically asking if it's possible to monitor files on a system that doesn't even belong to you ?
Word does know about a file already in use because it creates a hidden file next to the one you open. if there is already a hidden file, it means the file is already in use.
Other applications use different ways of knowing if a file they can use is already opened somewhere else.
In order to do what you want to do, you need to know how all the applications handle this problem...
A possible solution would be for you to create a small hidden file next to the file the user wants to open (just like MS Word does). Only problem, you need to destroy the file when it's closed by the user, and you have no way of knowing that...
I'm in the process of creating a launcher for a game with Visual Basic and I have pretty much everything done except many people may have files in different drives. So, I want them to select a file path then when they have selected that path I want the download button to download the files that the need downloaded to the selected directory. I was thinking that the beginning of the code would be something like this:
Form2.TextBox1.Text
and then something else after that in the buttons code.
I hope I'm being specific enough.
P.S. The reason why this is an issue is because if I use System.Diagnostic.Process.Start("C:\Program Files (x86)\[remaining folderpath here]") to launch the .exe then the program will only look for the files in that directory even though some people may have the files in their D: drives, etc. And, I have a FolderDialog setup and working.
I'm nearly ready to distribute my vb.net application. I have several picturebox files which are loaded currently from c:/temp
I need to change this directory to one that will be OK to use when the user installs it to their PC.
My question is how can I do this? Is there a way to get the installation path, then use that within the code as a variable? eg: myInstalledPath & "/xxx.jpg"
Or... would it be better for me to use mypictures within the mydocuments structure? I'd rather keep all the image files created in a folder which is more hidden from the user (by hidden I mean not cluttering up their own image folders!)
I've tried searching for this, but I seem to get varying results with no real answers... (possibly searching for the wrong thing!)
You can get the ExecutablePath with:
Dim appPath As String = Path.GetDirectoryName(Application.ExecutablePath)
Then you'll know where the application is residing.
As for where to save your images a common location is the AppData folder.
You can get it like this:
Dim appDataPath As String = Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.ApplicationData)
The AppData folder is by default a hidden folder so that satisfies your requirements.