Is there an existing method in C# to extract the file path from a string that represents a ConnectionString to a SqlCE .sdf file? I want to check if the file exists at initialization and back it up if the file has been modified.
Sample connection string:
strConn = "Data Source=|DataDirectory|\dbAlias.sdf";
You can use SqlCeConnectionStringBuilder class to parse existing Sql Compact connection string.
A bit late perhaps, but I came across this question wile struggling with the same problem. You can find the location of the |DataDirectory| folder with AppDomain.CurrentDomain.GetData("DataDirectory"). So your connectionstring can be translated like this:
strConn .Replace("|DataDirectory|", AppDomain.CurrentDomain.GetData("DataDirectory").ToString())
You could just create the connection and get the data source from it as a property:
string data;
using (var conn = new SqlConnection(connectionString)) {
data = conn.DataSource;
}
For LocalDB and SqlConnection (not CE):
public static string GetFilePathFromConnectionString(string connectionString)
{
var attachDbFileName = new SqlConnectionStringBuilder(connectionString).AttachDBFilename;
return attachDbFileName.Replace("|DataDirectory|", AppDomain.CurrentDomain.GetData("DataDirectory").ToString());
}