c# - How to get root directory of project in asp.net core. Directory.GetCurrentDirectory() doesn't seem to work correctly on a mac

Question

My project has a folder structure to the tune of:

• Project,
• Project/data
• Project/Engine
• Project/Server
• project/front-end

In the server (running in the Project/Server folder) I refer to the folder like this:

var rootFolder = Directory.GetCurrentDirectory();
rootFolder = rootFolder.Substring(0,
            rootFolder.IndexOf(@"Project", StringComparison.Ordinal) + @"Project".Length);
PathToData = Path.GetFullPath(Path.Combine(rootFolder, "Data"));

var Parser = Parser();
var d = new FileStream(Path.Combine(PathToData, $"{dataFileName}.txt"), FileMode.Open);
var fs = new StreamReader(d, Encoding.UTF8);

On my windows machine this code works fine since Directory.GetCurrentDirectory() reffered to the current folder, and doing

rootFolder.Substring(0, rootFolder.IndexOf(@"Project", StringComparison.Ordinal) + @"Project".Length); 

gets me the root folder of the project (not the bin or debug folders). But when I ran it on a mac it got "Directory.GetCurrentDirectory()" sent me to /usr//[something else]. It didn't refer to the folder where my project lies.

What is the correct way to find relative paths in my project? Where should I store the data folder in a way that it is easily accessible to all the sub projects in the solution - specifically to the kestrel server project? I prefer to not have to store it in the wwwroot folder because the data folder is maintained by a different member in the team, and I just want to access the latest version. What are my options?

Answer 1

Depending on where you are in the kestrel pipeline - if you have access to IConfiguration (Startup.cs constructor) or IWebHostEnvironment (formerly IHostingEnvironment) you can either inject the IWebHostEnvironment into your constructor or just request the key from the configuration.

Inject IWebHostEnvironment in Startup.cs Constructor

public Startup(IConfiguration configuration, IWebHostEnvironment env)
{
     var contentRoot = env.ContentRootPath;
}

Using IConfiguration in Startup.cs Constructor

public Startup(IConfiguration configuration)
{
     var contentRoot = configuration.GetValue<string>(WebHostDefaults.ContentRootKey);
}