How to navigate a few folders up?

One option would be to do System.IO.Directory.GetParent() a few times. Is there a more graceful way of travelling a few folders up from where the executing assembly resides?

What I am trying to do is find a text file that resides one folder above the application folder. But the assembly itself is inside the bin, which is a few folders deep in the application folder.

Other simple way is to do this:

string path = @"C:\Folder1\Folder2\Folder3\Folder4";
string newPath = Path.GetFullPath(Path.Combine(path, @"..\..\"));

Note This goes two levels up. The result would be: newPath = @"C:\Folder1\Folder2\";

Additional Note Path.GetFullPath normalizes the final result based on what environment your code is running on windows/mac/mobile/...

if c:\folder1\folder2\folder3\bin is the path then the following code will return the path base folder of bin folder

//string directory=System.IO.Directory.GetParent(Environment.CurrentDirectory).ToString());

string directory=System.IO.Directory.GetParent(Environment.CurrentDirectory).ToString();

ie,c:\folder1\folder2\folder3

if you want folder2 path then you can get the directory by

string directory = System.IO.Directory.GetParent(System.IO.Directory.GetParent(Environment.CurrentDirectory).ToString()).ToString();

then you will get path as c:\folder1\folder2\

You can use ..\path to go one level up, ..\..\path to go two levels up from path.

You can use Path class too.

C# Path class

This is what worked best for me:

string parentOfStartupPath = Path.GetFullPath(Path.Combine(Application.StartupPath, @"../"));

Getting the 'right' path wasn't the problem, adding '../' obviously does that, but after that, the given string isn't usable, because it will just add the '../' at the end. Surrounding it with Path.GetFullPath() will give you the absolute path, making it usable.

public static string AppRootDirectory()
        {
            string _BaseDirectory = AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory;
            return Path.GetFullPath(Path.Combine(_BaseDirectory, @"..\..\"));
        }

Maybe you could use a function if you want to declare the number of levels and put it into a function?

private String GetParents(Int32 noOfLevels, String currentpath)
{
     String path = "";
     for(int i=0; i< noOfLevels; i++)
     {
         path += @"..\";
     }
     path += currentpath;
     return path;
}

And you could call it like this:

String path = this.GetParents(4, currentpath);

The following method searches a file beginning with the application startup path (*.exe folder). If the file is not found there, the parent folders are searched until either the file is found or the root folder has been reached. null is returned if the file was not found.

public static FileInfo FindApplicationFile(string fileName)
{
    string startPath = Path.Combine(Application.StartupPath, fileName);
    FileInfo file = new FileInfo(startPath);
    while (!file.Exists) {
        if (file.Directory.Parent == null) {
            return null;
        }
        DirectoryInfo parentDir = file.Directory.Parent;
        file = new FileInfo(Path.Combine(parentDir.FullName, file.Name));
    }
    return file;
}

Note: Application.StartupPath is usually used in WinForms applications, but it works in console applications as well; however, you will have to set a reference to the System.Windows.Forms assembly. You can replace Application.StartupPath by
Path.GetDirectoryName(Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location) if you prefer.

C#

string upTwoDir = Path.GetFullPath(Path.Combine(System.AppContext.BaseDirectory, @"..\..\"));

Hiding a looped call to Directory.GetParent(path) inside an static method is the way to go.

Messing around with ".." and Path.Combine will ultimately lead to bugs related to the operation system or simply fail due to mix up between relative paths and absolute paths.

public static class PathUtils
{
    public static string MoveUp(string path, int noOfLevels)
    {
        string parentPath = path.TrimEnd(new[] { '/', '\\' });
        for (int i=0; i< noOfLevels; i++)
        {
            parentPath = Directory.GetParent(parentPath ).ToString();
        }
        return parentPath;
    }
}

this may help

string parentOfStartupPath = Path.GetFullPath(Path.Combine(Application.StartupPath, @"../../")) + "Orders.xml";
if (File.Exists(parentOfStartupPath))
{
    // file found
}

If you know the folder you want to navigate to, find the index of it then substring.

            var ind = Directory.GetCurrentDirectory().ToString().IndexOf("Folderame");

            string productFolder = Directory.GetCurrentDirectory().ToString().Substring(0, ind);

I have some virtual directories and I cannot use Directory methods. So, I made a simple split/join function for those interested. Not as safe though.

var splitResult = filePath.Split(new[] {'/', '\\'}, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);
var newFilePath = Path.Combine(filePath.Take(splitResult.Length - 1).ToArray());

So, if you want to move 4 up, you just need to change the 1 to 4 and add some checks to avoid exceptions.