Tag Archives: KnownFolders

UWP Accessing Documents Library

1 Reply

Accessing the documents library from a UWP app is frowned upon by Microsoft; however, it is possible. Here is some code that will access the library:

var files = await KnownFolders.DocumentsLibrary.GetFilesAsync(Windows.Storage.Search.CommonFileQuery.OrderByName);
 
foreach (var f in files)
{
    BasicProperties props = await f.GetBasicPropertiesAsync();

This will access the library and get the properties for each file. However, just running it will fail with this error:

uwpdoclib1

So, you’ll probably get this error and, like me (and not for the first time), go looking for it here:

uwpdoc2

Of course, you won’t find it (because it’s not there), and then you’ll turn to Google. If that brought you here then you’re next step is to open the manifest file directly:

…
  <Capabilities>
    <uap:Capability Name="documentsLibrary" />
  </Capabilities>
</Package>

If there are already Capabilities then just add the line:

    <uap:Capability Name="documentsLibrary" />

Note: you need the uap prefix.

And, that’s not all. Next you need to tell it which documents it can access:

      <Extensions>
        <uap:Extension Category="windows.fileTypeAssociation">
          <uap:FileTypeAssociation Name=".txt">
            <uap:DisplayName>Text</uap:DisplayName>
            <uap:SupportedFileTypes>
              <uap:FileType>.jpg</uap:FileType>
              <uap:FileType>.txt</uap:FileType>
              <uap:FileType>.gif</uap:FileType>
              <uap:FileType>.doc</uap:FileType>
              <uap:FileType>.xls</uap:FileType>
            </uap:SupportedFileTypes>
          </uap:FileTypeAssociation>
        </uap:Extension>
      </Extensions>
    </Application>
  </Applications>
  <Capabilities>
    <uap:Capability Name="documentsLibrary" />
  </Capabilities>
</Package>

And that’s it. I can understand why they have all these restrictions, but they can be frustrating for programmers.

Deleting Files in a Storage Folder Using UWP

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Just a little helper method that I used in a recent project to delete files, given a particular name, and excluding a provided list of files:

        internal static async Task DeleteTempFiles(ObservableCollection<StorageFile> exceptionFiles, StorageFolder folder, string fileNameStartsWith)
        {
            var files = (await folder.GetFilesAsync())
                .Where(p => p.DisplayName.StartsWith(fileNameStartsWith)
                && !exceptionFiles.Any(e => e.DisplayName == p.DisplayName));            

            foreach(var file in files)
            {
                await file.DeleteAsync(StorageDeleteOption.Default);                
            }
        }

You can call it like this:

	await FileHelper.DeleteTempFiles(Files, KnownFolders.PicturesLibrary, "_tmpFile");

It will delete all files in the Pictures folder starting with _tmpFile, and exclude anything in the Files collection.