ASP.NET: Path.Combine with relative paths

absolute-path, asp.net, relative-path

Solution

You are looking for the `MapPath` method.

// get the path in the local file system that corresponds to ~/Uploads/Images
string localPath = HttpContext.Current.Server.MapPath("~/Uploads/Images/");

Use it together with Path.Combine to create a file path:

string fileName = Path.Combine(
                      HttpContext.Current.Server.MapPath("~/Uploads/Images/"),
                      "filename.ext");
using (FileStream stream = File.OpenRead(fileName))
{
   // read the file
}

Problem

I'm trying to convert "~/Uploads/Images/" to an absolute path I can create a FileStream from. I've tried VirtualPathUtility and Path.Combine but nothing seems to give me the right path. The closest I got was VirtualPathUtility.ToAppRelative, but that was just the file's location as a direct child of C:. There must be a way to do this.

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