With the arrival of .NET 3.5 and consequently WPF applications, Microsoft has done away with the old Application WinForms class. No longer can you call Application.LocalUserAppDataPath to get where the user’s files are stored. To restore this functionality as well as add a bit more, I have tapped into an uncommon resource: extension methods. Let’s dig a little deeper, shall we?

The first thing we need to do is be able to get the Company Name from the assembly. Inside of a blank static class, add the following functions. I have named my class ApplicationExtensions.

Fortunately the company name is kept in an attribute:

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public static string GetCompanyName(this Assembly assembly)
{
    string name = string.Empty;
 
    object[] attributes = assembly.GetCustomAttributes(typeof(AssemblyCompanyAttribute), true);
 
    if (attributes != null && attributes.Length > 0)
    {
        AssemblyCompanyAttribute aca = attributes[0] as AssemblyCompanyAttribute;
 
        if (aca != null)
        {
            name = aca.Company;
        }
    }
 
    return name;
}

Note my lack of any formal error handling. I will leave this up to you to handle. For now, returning an empty string will do. Next up, we need to be able to format the version number:

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public static string GetFormattedVersion(this Assembly assembly)
{
    string version = string.Empty;
 
    try{
        Version assemblyVersion = assembly.GetName().Version;
 
        version = string.Format("{0}.{1}.{2}.{3}",
            assemblyVersion.Major,
            assemblyVersion.Minor,
            assemblyVersion.Build,
            assemblyVersion.Revision);
    }
    catch{}
 
    return version;
}

And finally, the LocalUserDataPath:

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public static string GetLocalUserAppDataPath(this Application application)
{
    string path = string.Empty;
 
    Assembly assembly = Assembly.GetEntryAssembly();
 
    if (assembly != null)
    {
        path = Path.Combine(
            Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.LocalApplicationData),
            Path.Combine(
                Path.Combine(
                    assembly.GetCompanyName(),
                    assembly.GetName().Name),
                assembly.GetFormattedVersion()
                )
            );
    }
 
    return path;
}

I have started, or rather restarted, a project under the codename of Vodka. This project is the replacement for FGCMS, or Focused Games Content Management System, the backend that has driven my sites for many years (until this site, anyways). The goal of Vodka is to create a simple and extendable CMS that is entirely based on XML and XSL technologies.

It is being written in ASP.NET on the .NET 3.5 platform. I am using Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2008 to write the backend, and plan to employ a lot of slick AJAX/Silverlight controls to provide both the frontend and backend user interfaces. Right now I have been working on a simple content management architecture that takes XML content, transforms it using XSLT and spits out HTML. Check the screenshot below of an early prototype.

Vodka will be built as part of the Focused Games Framework, so look forward to seeing a small portion of it in the next release!