What is the App Data folder used for in Visual Studio

Question

When creating a new ASP NET application in Visual Studio  a couple of files and folders are created automatically  One of those folders is called App Data   Also when publishing a website by selecting the menu option Build- gt Publish a checkbox is available Include files from the App Data folder   Am I right assuming that the files put in this file and its sub-folders are not going to be accessible through the web  For example  would it be safe to put in that folder resources that I only intend to be used by the application code    What is the real intended use of the App Data folder   EDIT   Thank you for all the answers  From the answers received so far I am interested mostly in two points mentioned     App Data is essentially a storage point for file-based data store It should not be viewable by the web and is a place for the web app to store and read data from   Would someone be able specify how the  not viewable by the web  is ensured   Can I rely on that fact when performing standard deployment  or do I need to check some IIS settings on the server as well   In the situation when I have a set of pdf files that I want to be accessible only from the application  Would App Data folder be the right place to use  or should I create a separate folder and manually set IIS to ensure that it is not accessible by Web

User · Answer

The intended use for App Data is to store database related file  Usually SQL Server Express  mdf files

User · Answer

From the documentation about ASP NET Web Project Folder Structure in MSDN      You can keep your Web project s files in any folder structure that is   convenient for your application  To make it easier to work with your   application  ASP NET reserves certain file and folder names that you   can use for specific types of content       App Data contains application data files including  mdf database files  XML files  and other data store files  The App Data folder is   used by ASP NET to store an application s local database  such as the   database for maintaining membership and role information  For more information  see Introduction to Membership and Understanding Role Management

User · Answer

in IIS  highlight the machine  double-click  Request Filtering   open the  Hidden Segments  tab    App Data  is listed there as a restricted folder   Yes i know this thread is really old  but this is still applicable

User · Answer

The main intention is for keeping your application s database file s  in   And no this will not be accessable from the web by default

User · Answer

App Data is essentially a storage point for file-based data stores  as opposed to a SQL server database store for example   Some simple sites make use of it for content stored as XML for example  typically where hosting charges for a DB are expensive

User · Answer

We use it as a temporary storage area for uploaded csv files  Once uploaded  an ajax method processes and deletes the file

User · Answer

The App Data folder is a folder  which your asp net worker process has files sytem rights too  but isn t published through the web server   For example we use it to update a local CSV of a contact us form  If the preferred method of emails fails or any querying of the data source is required  the App Data files are there   It s not ideal  but it it s a good fall-back

User · Answer

It s a place to put an embedded database  such as Sql Server Express  Access  or SQLite

User · Answer

The intended use of App data is to store application data for the web process to acess   It should not be viewable by the web and is a place for the web app to store and read data from

[asp.net] What is the App_Data folder used for in Visual Studio?

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