How do I get the path of the assembly the code is in?

Question

Is there a way to get the path for the assembly in which the current code resides? I do not want the path of the calling assembly, just the one containing the code.

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Answer 1

I suspect that the real issue here is that your test runner is copying your assembly to a different location. There's no way at runtime to tell where the assembly was copied from, but you can probably flip a switch to tell the test runner to run the assembly from where it is and not to copy it to a shadow directory.

Such a switch is likely to be different for each test runner, of course.

Have you considered embedding your XML data as resources inside your test assembly?

Answer 2

All of the proposed answers work when the developer can change the code to include the required snippet, but if you wanted to do this without changing any code you could use Process Explorer.

It will list all executing dlls on the system, you may need to determine the process id of your running application, but that is usually not too difficult.

I've written a full description of how do this for a dll inside II - http://nodogmablog.bryanhogan.net/2016/09/locating-and-checking-an-executing-dll-on-a-running-web-server/

Answer 3

var assembly = System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly();
var assemblyPath = assembly.GetFiles()[0].Name;
var assemblyDir = System.IO.Path.GetDirectoryName(assemblyPath);

Answer 4

I find my solution adequate for the retrieval of the location.

var executingAssembly = new FileInfo((Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location)).Directory.FullName;

Answer 5

This should work, unless the assembly is shadow copied:

string path = System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location

Answer 6

This is what I came up with. In between web projects, unit tests (nunit and resharper test runner); I found this worked for me.

I have been looking for code to detect what configuration the build is in, Debug/Release/CustomName. Alas, the #if DEBUG. So if someone can improve that!

Feel free to edit and improve.

Getting app folder. Useful for web roots, unittests to get the folder of test files.

public static string AppPath
{
    get
    {
        DirectoryInfo appPath = new DirectoryInfo(AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory);

        while (appPath.FullName.Contains(@"\bin\", StringComparison.CurrentCultureIgnoreCase)
                || appPath.FullName.EndsWith(@"\bin", StringComparison.CurrentCultureIgnoreCase))
        {
            appPath = appPath.Parent;
        }
        return appPath.FullName;
    }
}

Getting bin folder: Useful for executing assemblies using reflection. If files are copied there due to build properties.

public static string BinPath
{
    get
    {
        string binPath = AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory;

        if (!binPath.Contains(@"\bin\", StringComparison.CurrentCultureIgnoreCase)
            && !binPath.EndsWith(@"\bin", StringComparison.CurrentCultureIgnoreCase))
        {
            binPath = Path.Combine(binPath, "bin");
            //-- Please improve this if there is a better way
            //-- Also note that apps like webapps do not have a debug or release folder. So we would just return bin.
#if DEBUG
            if (Directory.Exists(Path.Combine(binPath, "Debug"))) 
                        binPath = Path.Combine(binPath, "Debug");
#else
            if (Directory.Exists(Path.Combine(binPath, "Release"))) 
                        binPath = Path.Combine(binPath, "Release");
#endif
        }
            return binPath;
    }
}