Best way to get application folder path

Question

I see that there are some ways to get the application folder path    Application StartupPath System IO Path GetDirectoryName  System Reflection Assembly GetExecutingAssembly   Location  AppDomain CurrentDomain BaseDirectory System IO Directory GetCurrentDirectory   Environment CurrentDirectory System IO Path GetDirectoryName  System Reflection Assembly GetExecutingAssembly   GetName   CodeBase  System IO Path GetDirectory Application ExecutablePath    What is the best way depending on the situation

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For a web application  to get the current web application root directory  generally call by web page for the current incoming request   HttpContext Current Server MapPath     System Web Hosting HostingEnvironment ApplicationPhysicalPath    Above code description

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AppDomain CurrentDomain BaseDirectory is probably the most useful for accessing files whose location is relative to the application install directory  In an ASP NET application  this will be the application root directory  not the bin subfolder - which is probably what you usually want  In a client application  it will be the directory containing the main executable  In a VSTO 2005 application  it will be the directory containing the VSTO managed assemblies for your application  not  say  the path to the Excel executable  The others may return different directories depending on your environment - for example see  Vimvq1987 s answer  CodeBase is the place where a file was found and can be a URL beginning with http     In which case Location will probably be the assembly download cache  CodeBase is not guaranteed to be set for assemblies in the GAC  UPDATE These days   NET Core   NET Standard 1 3  or  NET Framework 4 6   it s better to use AppContext BaseDirectory rather than AppDomain CurrentDomain BaseDirectory   Both are equivalent  but multiple AppDomains are no longer supported

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Note that not all of these methods will return the same value  In some cases  they can return the same value  but be careful  their purposes are different   Application StartupPath   returns the StartupPath parameter  can be set when run the application   System IO Directory GetCurrentDirectory     returns the current directory  which may or may not be the folder where the application is located  The same goes for Environment CurrentDirectory  In case you are using this in a DLL file  it will return the path of where the process is running  this is especially true in ASP NET

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Application StartupPathand 7  System IO Path GetDirectoryName Application ExecutablePath  - Is only going to work for Windows Forms application System IO Path GetDirectoryName  System Reflection Assembly GetExecutingAssembly   Location   Is going to give you something like   C   Windows  Microsoft NET  Framework  v4 0 30319  Temporary ASP NET Files  legal-services  e84f415e  96c98009  assembly  dl3  42aaba80  bcf9fd83 4b63d101  which is where the page that you are running is  AppDomain CurrentDomain BaseDirectory for web application could be useful and will return something like  C   hg  Services  Services  Services Website    which is base directory and is quite useful  System IO Directory GetCurrentDirectory   and  5  Environment CurrentDirectory   will get you location of where the process got fired from - so for web app running in debug mode from Visual Studio something like  C   Program Files  x86   IIS Express    System IO Path GetDirectoryName  System Reflection Assembly GetExecutingAssembly   GetName   CodeBase    will get you location where  dll that is running the code is  for web app that could be  file   C   hg  Services  Services  Services Website  bin   Now in case of for example console app points 2-6 will be directory where  exe  file is   Hope this saves you some time

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I have used this one successfully  System IO Path GetDirectoryName Process GetCurrentProcess   MainModule FileName    It works even inside linqpad

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Root directory   DriveInfo cDrive   new DriveInfo System Environment CurrentDirectory   var driverPath   cDrive RootDirectory

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this one System IO Path GetDirectory Application ExecutablePath  changed to System IO Path GetDirectoryName Application ExecutablePath

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In my experience  the best way is a combination of these    System Reflection Assembly GetExecutingAssembly   GetName   CodeBase Will give you the bin folder Directory GetCurrentDirectory   Works fine on  Net Core but not  Net and will give you the root directory of the project System AppContext BaseDirectory and AppDomain CurrentDomain BaseDirectory Works fine in  Net but not  Net core and will give you the root directory of the project   In a class library that is supposed to target Net and  Net core I check which framework is hosting the library and pick one or the other

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I started a process from a Windows Service over the Win32 API in the session from the user which is actually logged in  in Task Manager session 1 not 0   In this was we can get to know  which variable is the best   For all 7 cases from the question above  the following are the results   Path1  C  Program Files  x86  MyProgram Path2  C  Program Files  x86  MyProgram Path3  C  Program Files  x86  MyProgram  Path4  C  Windows system32 Path5  C  Windows system32 Path6  file  C  Program Files  x86  MyProgram Path7  C  Program Files  x86  MyProgram   Perhaps it s helpful for some of you  doing the same stuff  when you search the best variable for your case

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If you know to get the root directory   string rootPath   Path GetPathRoot Application StartupPath

[c#] Best way to get application folder path

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