Confused by IIS versus VWD 2008 Dev Server and System.Web.HttpRequest.ApplicationPath

[sundaydeveloper]

Using Visual Web Developer 08 and it's inbuilt Development Server I'm working through a LINQ to XML tutorial in a book.

This line is giving me a problem:

XElement doc = XElement.Load(Request.ApplicationPath + "\\authors.xml");


Request.ApplicationPath retrieves a path "E:/C10_LINQ/authors.xml" which doesn't exist.

I thought it should get something more http-ish like http://localhost/directory/website/authors.xml

I thought this might be due to using the inbuilt server rather than IIS so I installed IIS 5.0 on XP, which opened up a whole new can of worms because I can't get the website to run.

I am thrashing around in the dark with evil thoughts about reinstalling software!

I seek your help and guidance thanks.

[chazzy]

i think you want the RequestUri property, not application path

[sundaydeveloper]

Of course, thank you!

Got it to work firstly by calming down : ) reading the rest of the chapter properly and creating the XML file in the directory on my hard drive pointed to by Request.ApplicationPath.

Then following your suggestion:

XElement doc = XElement.Load(Request.Url.AbsoluteUri.Replace("tutorial.aspx", "Authors.xml");

fudged it nicely.

And I didn't reinstall anything lol