Get AppData Path

[SpiderPig]

enum UserPath
{
	PATH_DESKTOP,
	PATH_DOCUMENTS,
	PATH_PROGRAMDATA,
	PATH_APPDATA = PATH_PROGRAMDATA
};

I see PATH_APPDATA is currently defined as program data.  Should it be?  If yes... can we get a path to the Local or Roaming Appdata path for game saves?

[Josh]

Why not store this in program data? Are there really going to be multiple users on a computer your game is running, who each play the game and want to make sure their saves are stored separately?

[SpiderPig]

I never really thought about it like that.  I've just all ways used AppData for that purpose.  Even so, I think PATH_APPDATA should return the correct path.

[Josh]

I stopped using it because it's not cross-platform, and it's really hard to navigate to. Program data is the intended replacement. I'm storing all the engine settings there.

[SpiderPig]

Ah okay, that makes sense.  Thanks.

[SpiderPig]

@Josh I'd like to revise this suggestion to be able to use GetPath() to get the APP_DATA_ROAMING path.

Looking at Steams cloud save system there is no option to have it navigate to the programdata path.  These are the available paths for cloud saving.  I would rather use the AppData path than the documents path.  Also might be an idea to have get the paths on Mac & Linux - when the time comes.

 

[Josh]

There are two Windows command that do this. With those you can get anything you want.

WCHAR szPath[MAX_PATH];
if (SUCCEEDED(SHGetFolderPathW(NULL, CSIDL_COMMON_APPDATA | CSIDL_FLAG_CREATE, NULL, 0, szPath)))
{
	return WString(szPath).Replace("\\", "/");
}

PIDLIST_ABSOLUTE pidlist;
wchar_t path[MAX_PATH];
SHGetSpecialFolderLocation(NULL, CSIDL_DESKTOP, &pidlist);
SHGetPathFromIDListW(pidlist, path);
return WString(path).Replace("\\", "/");;

 

[reepblue]

This is my code from my API where it grabs whatever system environment you want. I might look into implementing the above as old Win32 API code can cause AV's to get grumpy but I haven't had problems so far.
 

	const std::wstring System::GetSystemEnviormentW(const std::string& env)
	{
#ifdef _WIN32 
		wchar_t* buf = nullptr;
		size_t sz = 0;

		std::wstring wenv = String::ToWString(env);

		// Use _dupenv_s to get the environment variable
		if (_wdupenv_s(&buf, &sz, wenv.c_str()) == 0 && buf != nullptr)
		{
			std::wstring result(buf);
			free(buf); // Free the allocated buffer
			return result;
		}
#else
		auto s = std::getenv(env.c_str());
		if (s == NULL) return String::ToWString(s);
#endif
		return L""; // Environment variable not found or error occurred
	}