I need to create a directory inside a windows users 'home' directory (c:\Documents and Settings\someusername\ or c:\users\someusername\). This directory will exist permanently but will only contain temporary files.
What is is the best location for this directory within the users profile if I want to be a good citizen? I should note that my program will be run by (possibly) non-admin users and will only need access to their own profile, but they must have permission to create the folder.
Using My Documents\NameOfMyApp\ is possible I guess, but that seems intrusive.
Is there a better location for this type of data, and a specific MFC call to access it?
I'd consider using the AppData directory. You can get its location with SHGetSpecialFolderLocation passing it CSIDL_APPDATA; (or a number of alternatives -- nearly every version of Windows adds a new replacement for SHGetSpecialFolderLocation, SHGetSpecialFolderPath, or (often) both).
Take a look at the following win32 calls:
GetUserProfileDirectory
GetAllUsersProfileDirectory
GetDefaultUserProfileDirectory
You probably want to use GetUserProfileDirectory and put your data in a sub-directory with your appname.
You will definitely want to use the function because there is no "\documents and settings" folder on vista and up, they changed to it "\user".
Being a good application citizen, you should use:
[drive]:\Documents and Settings[username]\Application Data[AppName] or
[drive]:\Documents and Settings[username]\Local Settings\Application Data[AppName]
(On Vista and Win7, "Documents and Settings" is replaced, most sensibly with "Users")
The environment variable USERPROFILE will provide the, you guessed it, User Profile Path.
The TEMP path provides the path to the user's individual temp directory
If the temp files aren't user-specific, you could use C:\temp
EDIT: If you are to use a user-specific location, I highly recommend that you use the environment variables (USERPATH on XP and 2000) rather than hard-coding the paths.
-Waldo
P.S. Thank you for asking this. I see bad behaviour from Waaaay too many applications. The root of the C: drive is not where you should be dumping things! At the very least, (test for the presence of, creating if necessary, and) use C:\Temp.
Related
The best way to find and get to AppData folder (specifically windows 7) is to type %AppData% in start command. But it takes me to C:\Users\user.name\AppData\Roaming
Why does it takes me to Roaming folder when the actual AppData Folder is one level up? It happens on both computers I have.
There is no environment variable for the root "AppData" folder because no one should ever put data there. Instead, applications put data into subfolders of the "AppData" folder depending on the nature of that data.
There are three subfolders:
Roaming
Local
LocalLow
The regular old %AppData% environment variable points to the path for the "Roaming" subfolder, which is where most applications should store their data, unless they have a specific reason that that data should not roam with the user's profile.
If you want the "Local" (non-roaming) sub-folder, use the %LocalAppData% environment variable instead.
As for typing this into the Start → Run dialog, that doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Data that is stored here is not intended for user consumption. It is private data stored by applications for their own use—things like configuration files, databases, etc. User-facing data should be in the Documents folder or at a path specified by the user. If you're a software developer accessing this folder for testing purposes, just go up one level.
Typing appdata (not %appdata%) in Run dialog (Win+R) takes you to %USERPROFILE%\AppData (i.e. %AppData%\..).
Hi I am trying to find out what is the best location to save a cache file.
I have an Windows form application that updates user's data from the server using a custom tool.
I want to write the timestamp of the latest updates done on user's machine in the cache file.
Where is the best location for keeping this file:
1. in application directory (c:\program files..)
2. in a temp location e.g. Users profile folder or c:\windows\temp
3. in any location (e.g. c:\dataupdates) where user has full access to read/write to.
Not in the application directory. That much is clear. :) The application directory shouldn't even be writable by the program (or actually by the user account that runs the program). Although some applications still use this location, it has actually been deprecated since Windows 95, I believe, and it has become a real pain since the more rigid UAC applied in Windows Vista and 7.
So the most obvious options are:
The temp folder, which is for temporary files. Note however, that you will need to clean those files up. Temp folder is not automatically cleared by default, so adding new files all the time will consume increasingly much space on the hard drive. On the other hand, some users do clear their temp folders, or may have scripts installed that do that for them, so you cannot trust such files to remain. Also, this is not always C:\Temp of whatever. You'll have to ask Windows what the location is.
You can pick 'any' location. Note that you cannot write anywhere. You cannot even expect the C drive to exist. If you choose this, then you have to make it a configurable setting.
The %app data% directory, my personal favorite, which is a special directory for applications to store their data in. The advantage is, that you can ask Windows for this location, and you can make up a relative path based on that directory, so you don't really have to make it an application setting. For more info on how to get it, see also this question: C# getting the path of %AppData%
I would definitely choose the App Data path for this purpose.
I'm making an installer and I want it to extract to a specific user path like C:\Current User\Documents with current user being the current user installing it. Anyway to do this?
The most important thing is to never hard-code a path like C:\Current User\Documents or C:\Documents and Settings\username, because the actual folder names will vary depending on the Operating System and language of the user's computer.
In most installers, you can use a pre-defined command-line variable for various OS defined folders. For example, the variable %HOMEDRIVE% points to the default driver letter such as C:\, and %HOMEPATH% is usually the profile folder. So, on my computer,
%HOMEDRIVE%\%HOMEPATH% = C:\Users\username
The command-line variable %USERPROFILE% points to the same location. If you just need the username, use %USERNAME%.
If you are looking for the user's "My Documents" folder or other similar folders, you can get it from the registry:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders
I was going through the source code of a rainmeter skin and i could not understand :
TextShortcut1=Computer
TextShortcut2=Libraries
TextShortcut3=Internet
TextShortcut4=Media Player
TextShortcut5=Control Panel
TextShortcut6=Trash
TextShortcut7=ShutDown
TextPath1=::{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}
TextPath2=shell:Libraries
TextPath3=http://google.com
TextPath4=shell:MusicLibrary
TextPath5=::{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002b30309d}
TextPath6=::{645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E}
TextPath7=rundll32.exe user32.dll LockWorkStation
Can anyone tell me what
::{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}
::{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002b30309d}
::{645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E}
these are
and also how can we get one of these for a specific location from our computer.
Those are CLSID (Windows Class Identifiers). Certain special folders within the operating system are identified by unique strings.
20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D is My Computer
21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002b30309d is Control Panel
645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E is Recycle Bin
Source:
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/110919-clsid-key-list-windows-7-a.html
In response to the comment:
can i have Class Identifiers for any folder on Computer or is it just
the bunch of those.
There isn't much reason for you to add more clsids, since you can just go to other locations by typing the normal path. This is a set list that is in the registry somewhere for special folders that don't really have "paths" like C:\windows does.
what is "shell:Something" is it a cmd command or location
shell: is similar to above. It is a convenient way of accessing special folders. Here is a good site for a list: http://smallvoid.com/article/winnt-shell-keyword.html . It is more of a shortcut for Windows Explorer to access a specific location than it is a command. You cant use them in batch files as far as I know (no command line stuff).
what is %something% like %temp%
Those are environment variables. You can usually count on certain ones existing, but the user can change these. Here is a list of some more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environment_variables#Microsoft_Windows
how do they all differ?
Well, basically, they are just different ways of accessing the same thing. Some things are more backwards compatible than others, so you have to make that choice when the time comes. If you know your app is going to be on Windows 7 and above, you can make use of some of the more convenient shell:something ones. But if it needs to run on Windows 2000, you might have to rely more on older stuff like environment variables. Environment variables can also be customized by the user.
For several of our applications we use an application configuration file. It usually just stores some directory paths and a few universal settings. We usually save it in the application directory (C:/Program Files/MyAppName)
One problem we see is users want to edit this (from the application) while logged in as a user that doesn't have access to write to the directory. Our applications are commonly installed and initially configured as an admin, but mostly used by (several different) limited users.
Is there a good way to make the setting.xml file read/write accessible to all users? Or a good place to put it?
C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\<Your App> might be a decent place to consider.
Pass CSIDL_COMMON_APPDATA to SHGetSpecialFolderPath to get the writable, shared root data directory. Given that you can create a directory for your company and application.
Application data folder or moving to registry.
How important is localization? If localization isn't a high priority, you can store the files in %allusersprofile%\Application Data\ - that's the appdata folder accessible to all user accounts, and will work regardless of where things are installed, but only on English operating system installs.
If you want to store a file in the local user's directory and give each user their own, you can use %appdata% - that one will be entirely localized. But, each user will need their own copy, so it won't work if you need a common configuration.
If you need it to both be common to all users, and be 100% localized, you need to do a bit more work. I tried to find something like %allusersappdata%, and while I can find references online to that string, I can't get it to work on my own system. The workaround I found was to pull up %appdata% to find the localized text for the words Application Data, then use that to browse to that subfolder under %allusersprofile% - a bit more complicated, but it's the most bulletproof way I can find to do it. Someone please correct me if there's a direct path you can use to get to that folder.
I would try this previous question.
Which says:
System.Environment.SpecialFolder.LocalApplicationData
If you are using .NET