Get the Paths to My Documents, My Pictures, Etc.

Problem : You need to get the path of a user’s special folders, such as his documents folder.

Solution: You should never hard-code the paths. Not only can different versions of the OS have different folder names, but the user can change these folders to be in whatever location he wants. Use Environment.GetFolder() with the Environment.SpecialFolder enumeration to retrieve the actual folder on the disk. The following code will print the entire list:

foreach (Environment.SpecialFolder folder in Enum.GetValues(typeof(Environment.SpecialFolder)))
{
    string path = Environment.GetFolderPath(folder);
    Console.WriteLine("{0}\t==>\t{1}", folder, path);
}

					    

Note

In general, you should put your application’s data in the LocalApplicationData (nonroaming) or ApplicationData (roaming) folder. That is what these folders are meant for. Examine them on your own computer to see how other software uses them. You should never write program data to ProgramFiles or anywhere file security is an issue. The ApplicationData directory will be replicated on all computers to which the user logs on in a domain, so avoid putting unnecessary data there. Starting with Windows Vista, the operating system enforces file security much more strongly, and an application that doesn’t pay attention to security issues can break.