7

I'm porting a small MVC 5 website to MVC 6 to spot breaking changes. Stuff is breaking.

The MVC 5 code uses @File.GetLastWriteTime(this.Server.MapPath(this.VirtualPath)) to get the timestamp, as recommended here. Apparently in MVC 6, the .cshtml page no longer has Server or VirtualPath members. What's the new incantation?

Community
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Paul Williams
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4 Answers4

4

Revisiting my own question 18 months later... the framework is now ASP.NET Core 2.0 MVC and it seems the framework, documentation and best practices have changed a bit.

You should use a FileProvider as described in the MS docs. There's no point in recreating that article here, but be sure to:

  • Add an IHostingEnvironment to the Startup constructor parameters, and save it off in a local variable, as described in the docs
  • In Startup.ConfigureServices(), call services.AddSingleton(HostingEnvironment.ContentRootFileProvider); to register an IFileProvider service, also described in the docs
  • Add an IFileProvider to the controller's constructor parameters, and save it off in a local variable

Then to actually get the last modified date, the controller will look something like this:

public class HomeController : Controller
{
    private IFileProvider _fileProvider;

    public HomeController(IFileProvider fileProvider)
    {
        _fileProvider = fileProvider;
    }

    public IActionResult Index()
    {
        DateTimeOffset lastModifiedDate = _fileProvider.GetFileInfo(@"Views\Home\Index.cshtml").LastModified;
        // use it wisely...
        return View();
    }
Paul Williams
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1

An alternative solution for @PaulWilliam's asnwer

In cases when you can't use a File provider for any reasons, getting a file's last modified date can be done using the System.IO.File static class and it's method GetLastWriteTime or GetLastWriteTimeUtc which returns a DateTime obj:

DateTime lastModified = System.IO.File.GetLastWriteTimeUtc(filePath);

Note that the non-utc method, GetLastWriteTime returns the last-modified date based on the server/filesystem time.

Other than that, and all the write-read methods, System.IO.File also contains methods that help retrieve data as last access time, creation time etc. Not only getter methods, but setters aswell.

Docs: File Class - MS Docs

Also worth pointing out that you can use the GetAttributes/SetAttributes methods to work with FileAttributes enums which are used for defining a file's status as Hidden, Compressed etc.

Docs: File.GetAttributes(String) Method - MS Docs and FileAttributes Enum - MS Docs

eja
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0

You can get ApplicationBasePath from the IApplicationEnvironment service.

private readonly IApplicationEnvironment _env;

public FileController(IApplicationEnvironment appEnv)
{
    _env= appEnv;
}

public IActionResult Index()
{
    var myModel = _env.ApplicationBasePath;
    return View(myModel);
}

Then you can make your own path calculation, like this, for example:

    public IActionResult Index()
    {
        var myFileVirtualPath = "/ab/c.d"
        var myModel = Path.Combine(_env.ApplicationBasePath, myFileVirtualPath);
        return View(myModel);
    }
Luca Ghersi
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-2

@(new System.IO.FileInfo(new Microsoft.Extensions.FileProviders.PhysicalFileProvider(Environment.CurrentDirectory).GetFileInfo(this.Path).PhysicalPath).CreationTime)

nevin olson
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