ASP.NET UNC connection string in C# 1

[drepp]

I'm working on a C# ASP.NET app, and I'm having a problem with a connection string to an Access database. All of the examples I can find online se either server.mappath or the physical drive letter. However, all I have to work with in this case is a UNC path. What should the syntax for the connection string look like?

I tried "DATA Source=\\server\\dir\\dir\\file.mdb" but it keeps trying to resolve that down to "c:\server\dir\dir\file.mdb" as if the server was a directory!

So, please help! How do I get a UNC path to work as a data source path? I can do this in VB with "\\server\dir\dir\file.mdb", but I can't seem to figure out the similar code for C#.

 

[rosenk]

You need to use [tt]"\\\\"[/tt] to get 2 backslashes, so it would be:
[tt]"DATA Source=\\\\server\\dir\\dir\\file.mdb"[/tt]

 

[drepp]

That worked! Thank you SO much! You wouldn't believe how hard it was to get that simple little piece of information.

 

[chiph]

drepp -

The slash character is an escape character in C# (and C, and C++). For instance, if you want to include a newline character, you'd concatenate '/n' (as a character) or "/n" (as a string) to your string. To have something equivalent to VB's vbCrLf constant, you'd concatenate "/n/r", which is newline and carriage return.

There is no equivalent to the VB.NET ControlChars module that has CrLf, NewLine, Tab, FormFeed, etc in it, although you could define a static class that had the same info if you like. Most C# programmers are happy with the escape characters, though.

Chip H.

 

[rosenk]

Need to be careful about that. It's the backslash character "\" that acts as the escape character.

 

[Larsson]

If you use @ infront of a string, then the / will not work as a escape character.

So this line "DATA Source=\\\\server\\dir\\dir\\file.mdb"
could look like this:
@"DATA Source=\\server\dir\dir\file.mdb"

Markus

 

[chiph]

rosenk -

Thanks for the reminder. I switch between systems (Win, Linux) a lot, so I always forget which is which.

Chip H.