File Locator

This library includes methods for searching directories for files, and ensuring, if necessary, that they can be written.

This library requires Net9 and has nullability enabled.

You can find the library's GitHub repository here.

The change log is available here.

• Overview
• Configuring via Fluent API
• Search methods
• Results

Overview

When dealing with files, I sometimes want to allow "the" file to exist in one of several locations. Consequently, finding "the file" requires searching various directories. FileLocator is intended to simplify doing that.

You define the search parameters by using a fluent API applied to an instance of FileLocator (supplying an ILoggerFactory instance is optional, but enables logging):

// define the directories to be searched // there are other scan methods that use various default locations var toSearch = dirToSearch.Select( x => Path.Combine( Environment.CurrentDirectory, x ) ); foundPath = Path.Combine( Environment.CurrentDirectory, foundPath ); var fileLoc = new FileLocator(_loggerFactory) .FileToFind( fileToFind ) .Required() .ScanDirectories( toSearch ); fileLoc.Matches.Should().Be( matches ); fileLoc.FirstMatch.Should().NotBeNull(); fileLoc.FirstMatch!.Path.ToLower().Should().Be( foundPath.ToLower() );

After one of the scan methods is called, the FileLocator instances will contain whatever files were found which match the criteria. The matches can be obtained by iterating the instance, which returns a sequence of PathInfo objects describing the files that were found (see the details on PathInfo below)

return to table of contents

Fluent API Configuration Methods

The fluent API methods for configuring how the search is done are:

Method	Arguments	Comments
FileSystemIsCaseSensitive		makes the search case sensitive, overriding the default defined when FileLocator is created (which relies on Environment.OSVersion.Platform)
FileSystemIsNotCaseSensitive