How to retrieve .dotx and .csv files from Resources Folder in C#?

Question

I have an application that uses a template file and a CSV file. It works perfectly fine since I do have the said files on my computer and I am referencing their paths. The only thing I want to do is that when the software is published and installed (and the said files are in the Resources folder so it would make them an embedded resource), the csv and template files would be copied to a directory folder that my program would use. Preferably the paths it would be copied to would be something like this : "C:\FILES" + template.dotx .

Now how do I get/retrieve the said files from the Resources Folder in my software into a new folder?

Answer 1

You could call

System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().GetManifestResourceNames();

And inspect which embedded resources are accessible. Then you can compare that against what you are passing in to see if you are indeed accomplishing what you expected to.

string FileExtractTo = "C:\FILES";
DirectoryInfo dirInfo = new DirectoryInfo(FileExtractTo);

if (!dirInfo.Exists())
    dirInfo.Create();

using (Stream input = Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().GetManifestResourceStream(resourceName))
using (Stream output = File.Create(FileExtractTo + "\template.dotx"))
{
    CopyStream(input, output);
}

CopyStream Method:

public static void CopyStream(Stream input, Stream output)
{
    // Insert null checking here for production
    byte[] buffer = new byte[8192];

    int bytesRead;
    while ((bytesRead = input.Read(buffer, 0, buffer.Length)) > 0)
    {
        output.Write(buffer, 0, bytesRead);
    }
}