Finding App_Data Programmatically

While writing some code I needed to be able to access the the App_Data directory in my ASPNET MVC app. Doing this usually involves a Server.MapPath, but this wont work for my unit test.

Here’s how you can get around it:

var appDataPath = (string)AppDomain.CurrentDomain.GetData(“DataDirectory”) ?? AppDomain.CurrentDomain.SetupInformation.ApplicationBase;

Now I have my data directory for the test as well as during execution of the ASPNET MVC app.

During unit test execution it will be in testing directory while at runtime it will be in the ASPNET App_Data directory.