Confusion over relative and absolute paths

Question

I have a WPF program which deals with images on a canvas.

I am at the stage where I am trying to use serialization to be able to save the contents of my program and reload it at a later stage.

So At the moment when I am inserting any images into a control I am using absolute path values, I understand that this would be a bad idea for a program where I am wanting to save the state of the program and reload it at a later time.

So what is the best course of action to take in this situation.

Do I create a folder inside my WPF project for example called Images and then do I copy all Images I use in my program to this folder and then point the path to this?

Or am I completely on the wrong lines here?

Answer 1

If you are serializing the state data of your application, you would usually create a folder in one or more of the so-called system special folders, which you can get by a call to Environment.GetFolderPath.

You may for example store data with application scope (same for all users) in a folder below the special folder specified by the SpecialFolder.CommonApplicationData enum (which is C:\ProgramData on Windows 7 systems).

Data that is specific for the current roaming user (who works on multiple computers on a network), would be stored in a folder below SpecialFolder.ApplicationData. There is also SpecialFolder.LocalApplicationData for the non-roaming user.

You may take a look at the Environment.SpecialFolder enumeration to get an overview.

Answer 2

From my own experience, create a folder and save the images there. It will just make your life easier in the long run, and it makes it easy to see where the resources of the application are.