J4JSoftware.FileUtilities 1.0.0

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)

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Fluent API Configuration Methods

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

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Search Methods

The search is performed by calling one of several scanning methods, most of which allow an optional enumerable of secondary search paths to be included:

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Results

Searches generate an enumeration of matching files, which can be obtained by iterating the FileLocator instance used to do the search.

The values returned by the enumeration are PathInfo objects:

PathState is a flags Enum that can contain one or more values:

[ Flags ]
public enum PathState
{
    Exists = 1 << 0,
    Readable = 1 << 1,
    Writeable = 1 << 2,

    None = 0,
    All = Exists | Readable | Writeable
}

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