How do I get the path of the assembly the code is in?

Note: Assembly.CodeBase is deprecated in .NET Core/.NET 5+: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.reflection.assembly.codebase?view=net-5.0

Original answer:

I’ve defined the following property as we use this often in unit testing.

public static string AssemblyDirectory
{
    get
    {
        string codeBase = Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().CodeBase;
        UriBuilder uri = new UriBuilder(codeBase);
        string path = Uri.UnescapeDataString(uri.Path);
        return Path.GetDirectoryName(path);
    }
}

The Assembly.Location property sometimes gives you some funny results when using NUnit (where assemblies run from a temporary folder), so I prefer to use CodeBase which gives you the path in URI format, then UriBuild.UnescapeDataString removes the File:// at the beginning, and GetDirectoryName changes it to the normal windows format.

Leave a Comment