With System.Data.SQLite how do you specify a database file in the connect string using a relative path

Question

Wanting to deploy my project on different servers I would prefer to be able to specify a connect string using a relative path. I can't seem to get that to work and want to know if there is some trick to it...?

Solution 1

How about this?

"Data Source=|DataDirectory|mydb.db;..."

I believe |DataDirectory| point to the directory where your app is located. I use NHibernate and it works with the following:

<add key="hibernate.connection.connection_string"
       value="Data Source=|DataDirectory|mydb.db;Version=3;Compress=False;synchronous=OFF;" >

Solution 2

A suggestion

You could build the absolute path in the app and pass that in the connection string.

So, if you know that the database file is in the database subfolder of the application folder, you could do something like this (C#):

    string relativePath = @"database\myfile.s3db";
    string currentPath;
    string absolutePath;
    string connectionString;

    currentPath = System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location;
    absolutePath = System.IO.Path.Combine(currentPath,relativePath);

    connectionString = string.Format("DataSource={0}", absolutePath);

    SQLiteConnection cnn = new SQLiteConnection(connectionString);

(Someone can probably correct me on how to get the current path).

Comments

[Karl]

This would be the proper method, except that it doesnt support designtime, as in, your program will work in debug and in release modes, but when trying to edit the dataset definitions, it crashes out with "unable to connect to the DB". it is a known bug in SQLITe.

[Kind Contributor]

Yuk, don't use reflection namespace to get the base path. use: AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory