Copy the entire contents of a directory in C#

Question

I want to copy the entire contents of a directory from one location to another in C#.

There doesn\'t appear to be a way to do this using System.IO class

Answer 1

Much easier

//Now Create all of the directories
foreach (string dirPath in Directory.GetDirectories(SourcePath, "*", 
    SearchOption.AllDirectories))
    Directory.CreateDirectory(dirPath.Replace(SourcePath, DestinationPath));

//Copy all the files & Replaces any files with the same name
foreach (string newPath in Directory.GetFiles(SourcePath, "*.*", 
    SearchOption.AllDirectories))
    File.Copy(newPath, newPath.Replace(SourcePath, DestinationPath), true);

Answer 2

If you like Konrad's popular answer, but you want the source itself to be a folder under target, rather than putting it's children under the target folder, here's the code for that. It returns the newly created DirectoryInfo, which is handy:

public static DirectoryInfo CopyFilesRecursively(DirectoryInfo source, DirectoryInfo target)
{
  var newDirectoryInfo = target.CreateSubdirectory(source.Name);
  foreach (var fileInfo in source.GetFiles())
    fileInfo.CopyTo(Path.Combine(newDirectoryInfo.FullName, fileInfo.Name));

  foreach (var childDirectoryInfo in source.GetDirectories())
    CopyFilesRecursively(childDirectoryInfo, newDirectoryInfo);

  return newDirectoryInfo;
}

Answer 3

One variant with only one loop for copying of all folders and files:

foreach (var f in Directory.GetFileSystemEntries(path, "*", SearchOption.AllDirectories))
{
    var output = Regex.Replace(f, @"^" + path, newPath);
    if (File.Exists(f)) File.Copy(f, output, true);
    else Directory.CreateDirectory(output);
}

Answer 4

It may not be performance-aware, but I'm using it for 30MB folders and it works flawlessly. Plus, I didn't like all the amount of code and recursion required for such an easy task.

var src = "c:\src";
var dest = "c:\dest";
var cmp = CompressionLevel.NoCompression;
var zip = source_folder + ".zip";

ZipFile.CreateFromDirectory(src, zip, cmp, includeBaseDirectory: false);
ZipFile.ExtractToDirectory(zip, dest_folder);

File.Delete(zip);

Note: ZipFile is available on .NET 4.5+ in the System.IO.Compression namespace

Answer 5

You can always use this, taken from Microsofts website.

static void Main()
{
    // Copy from the current directory, include subdirectories.
    DirectoryCopy(".", @".\temp", true);
}

private static void DirectoryCopy(string sourceDirName, string destDirName, bool copySubDirs)
{
    // Get the subdirectories for the specified directory.
    DirectoryInfo dir = new DirectoryInfo(sourceDirName);

    if (!dir.Exists)
    {
        throw new DirectoryNotFoundException(
            "Source directory does not exist or could not be found: "
            + sourceDirName);
    }

    DirectoryInfo[] dirs = dir.GetDirectories();
    // If the destination directory doesn't exist, create it.
    if (!Directory.Exists(destDirName))
    {
        Directory.CreateDirectory(destDirName);
    }

    // Get the files in the directory and copy them to the new location.
    FileInfo[] files = dir.GetFiles();
    foreach (FileInfo file in files)
    {
        string temppath = Path.Combine(destDirName, file.Name);
        file.CopyTo(temppath, false);
    }

    // If copying subdirectories, copy them and their contents to new location.
    if (copySubDirs)
    {
        foreach (DirectoryInfo subdir in dirs)
        {
            string temppath = Path.Combine(destDirName, subdir.Name);
            DirectoryCopy(subdir.FullName, temppath, copySubDirs);
        }
    }
}

Answer 6

Or, if you want to go the hard way, add a reference to your project for Microsoft.VisualBasic and then use the following:

Microsoft.VisualBasic.FileIO.FileSystem.CopyDirectory(fromDirectory, toDirectory);

However, using one of the recursive functions is a better way to go since it won't have to load the VB dll.