How do you access a Metro app's local storage in a desktop application in Windows 8?

.net, c#, c++, microsoft-metro, windows-8

Solution

Finding the local storage folder of a Windows 8 Style application

http://blog.falafel.com/Blogs/paul-tidwell/2012/08/27/finding-the-local-storage-folder-of-a-windows-8-style-application

The path to Windows 8 Style apps is as follows:

`C:\Users\{username}\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.BingSports_8wekyb3d8bbwe`

There is a new Windows API which uses an internal and undisclosed algorithm to create a publisher hash, which when appended to the package name becomes the family name. Family name looks like `{packagename}_{publisherhash}`

If you wanted another desktop application or need to share this between some set of applications you can call the API via PowerShell cmdlet like so:

(Get-AppxPackage -AllUsers -Name  $name).PackageFamilyName

Write that to the registry and voila! Your application can use Environment.UserName and the path pattern above to easily find your appx local storage.

Problem

Is there an API available for this in .Net? What about in the Windows API? If not, has anyone come up with some hackish-way to do this yet?

Original source