How to read files from project folders? - windows-phone-7

Question

When the first time my app starts on a windows phone, I want to get some files(xml/images) from project folders and write them to the isolated storage .
How do I detect that my app is running for the first time?
How do I access file in project folders?

Answer 1

Here is another way to read files from your visual studio project. The following shows how to read a txt file but can be used for other file as well. Here the file is in the same directory as the .xaml.cs file.
var res = App.GetResourceStream(new Uri("test.txt", UriKind.Relative));
var txt = new StreamReader(res.Stream).ReadToEnd();
make sure your file is marked as Content.

Answer 2

If you mean project folders as in the folders in your visual studio project, I usually right click on the files and set the build action to 'Embedded Resource'. At runtime, you can read the data from the embedded resource like so:
// The resource name will correspond to the namespace and path in the file system.
// Have a look at the resources collection in the debugger to figure out the name.
string resourcePath = "assembly namespace" + "path inside project";
Assembly assembly = Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly();
string[] resources = assembly .GetManifestResourceNames();
List<string> files = new List<string>();
if (resource.StartsWith(resourcePath))
{
StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(assembly.GetManifestResourceStream(resource), Encoding.Default);
files.Add(reader.ReadToEnd());
}
To read the images you would need something like this to read the stream:
public static byte[] ReadAllBytes(Stream input)
{
byte[] buffer = new byte[32 * 1024];
using (MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream())
{
int read;
while ((read = input.Read(buffer, 0, buffer.Length)) > 0)
{
ms.Write(buffer, 0, read);
}
return ms.ToArray();
}
}