Sending A File As A Method Argument?

Question

Is this sort of thing possible:

public static void DoThis(file aFile){
    //Blah blah blah
}

Solution

It depends what you need to do with it :)

Options include:

• path (string)
• contents (string or byte[])
• some complex object model (od your own choosing) of the contents
• FileInfo
• FileStream (or just Stream)
• some kind of reader/writer; TextReader, XmlWriter etc

Comments

[Muad'Dib]

@Marc Gravell an instance of a class of the type "file"

[Brian]

C# will allow you to pass a handle to a file using IntPtr or SafeFileHandle. However, that's a bit low level and mainly is only useful for interop. See stackoverflow.com/questions/3562513/… for discussion.

[Brian]

@Muad'Dib: As file is not part of the framework, your answer strikes me as begging the question.

[Muad'Dib]

@Brian the OP supplied the paramaters, and it was his/her code that i was using.

[Brian]

@Muad'Dib: But since the OP was asking, "Is this sort of thing possible?" your answer doesn't provide any information on how to make it possible. As the title indicates, the OP's underlying question is how to send a file as a method argument. The code is an example of the syntax he hopes to use.

[Muad'Dib]

@Brian and the OP doesn't say it is a System.IO.File or some custom class, he just asks if it is possible. and, as we know, it is.

[BornToCode]

If it's a posted file (from HTML input field) you could also pass the file as a HttpPostedFile (its class is in System.Web.dll)

[floydheld]

maybe a short example for each option?