[RESOLVED] Identifying a network drive and finding its path

[Holywhippet]

I'm writing a small tool for ArcMap that invokes one of the tools built into it. For some reason though the tool, and Arc in general, is kind of picky when dealing with network drives. Say I have a network share mapped as the P: drive. The share itself is \\Canberra\Projects. Now, when I send a parameter into the tool that lists the path of a file, I need to send it in as \\Canberra\Projects\file.txt rather than P:\file.txt.

I can't be sure in advance what the drive mappings might be for a user, so how do I work out if a drive is a network connection rather than a physical drive and how do I extract the network mapping for that drive?

[sevenhalo]

You don't have to worry about it...

*holds for a sigh of releif*

I network shared drive is the same as pathing, just not as easy to explain to an end user. Giving it the full name should work regardless of if the mapped drive is P or E or N or I or..... Q

Cheeky monkey

[Holywhippet]

I think you've missed my point. The Arc tool I'm invoking will not work correctly if I give it the file path in the form P:\file.txt. It complains that it can't find the file basically. I have to put it in the form \\Canberra\Projects\file.txt.

[jmcilhinney]

If what you say is true and it will not accept a local path for a network share then you should take a look at this article. I've never had the pleasure myself but I believe that the FileSystemObject and Drive objects should be able to give you the information you're after.

[jmcilhinney]

I was hoping that VB 2005 might have something better to offer through the DriveInfo class and/or the My.Computer.FileSystem object but it appears not.

[sevenhalo]

God has spoke, bow with me

Strong server name or pathed, it should work if the network path drive is the same. If it's not that, the divine eye of jmc will explain in detail.

*keep your head down, he's not done *

Sarcasm/kidding aside, he knows alot more then I do; i really would like to hear this as well.

[jmcilhinney]

God has spoke, bow with me

Strong server name or pathed, it should work if the network path drive is the same. If it's not that, the divine eye of jmc will explain in detail.

*keep your head down, he's not done *

Sarcasm aside, he knows alot more then I do; i really would like to hear this as well.

I have no idea why it wouldn't worked with a local path either. If you just try to perfrom a file system operation the OS should handle any translation required. That's the whole point of mapping a network share to a drive letter in the first place: so that you can treat it like a local path. If it doesn't work in this case then I can only assume that the authors of this component have done something screwy internally. Bad programming on their part I'd say. If you can access the share via the UNC path then there's no point preventing access via the mapped local path. All I'm saying is that if they have somehow prevented use of mapped local paths for shares then the FSO should be able to give you the information you need to get the UNC path from the local path.

[Holywhippet]

One of the other Arc products, Arc Catalog, lists drivers/folders in your computers and lets you browse the GIS data therein. It lists physical drives, but not network ones. If you want to access network data you have to tell it the network path for the data. I've absolutely no idea why this is so but it is - it's one of many oddities about the Arc products.

Anyway, details on the FileSystemObject class seem pretty sketchy - is this really in .NET or just VB? I tried the following code:

Dim fso As Object
fso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
fso.getDrive("P:")
Dim temp = fso.Drive.ShareName

The first three lines work ok, but the last line gives me this error:

"Public member 'Drive' on type 'IFileSystem3' not found."

Ok, I'm guessing that the fso has an interface of type IFileSystem3 - but I can find no details on that at all.

[gigemboy]

You can look for network drives using WMI Here is a short example, uses the Win32_LogicalDisk WMI class. Looks for a DriveType of "4", which is a network drive.

***NOTE - add reference to system.management in order to use

Dim MyobjectQuery As New System.Management.ObjectQuery("select * from Win32_LogicalDisk")
        Dim MySearcher As New System.Management.ManagementObjectSearcher(MyobjectQuery)
        'loops for all drives on system
        For Each Mgmt As System.Management.ManagementObject In MySearcher.Get()
            'looks for drives with drivetype of 4 which is network drive
            If Mgmt("DriveType").ToString = "4" Then
                'display caption, which is drive letter
                MessageBox.Show(Mgmt("Caption").ToString)
                'below should display network drive path, but couldnt test
                MessageBox.Show(Mgmt("ProviderName").ToString
            End If
        Next

For the list of properties for the Win32_LogicalDisk class, check here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/de...ogicaldisk.asp

I couldnt test it on a network drive, as I have none, but a drivetype of "5" worked fine for me.

[Holywhippet]

You can look for network drives using WMI Here is a short example, uses the Win32_LogicalDisk WMI class. Looks for a DriveType of "4", which is a network drive.

***NOTE - add reference to system.management in order to use

Dim MyobjectQuery As New System.Management.ObjectQuery("select * from Win32_LogicalDisk")
        Dim MySearcher As New System.Management.ManagementObjectSearcher(MyobjectQuery)
        'loops for all drives on system
        For Each Mgmt As System.Management.ManagementObject In MySearcher.Get()
            'looks for drives with drivetype of 4 which is network drive
            If Mgmt("DriveType").ToString = "4" Then
                'display caption, which is drive letter
                MessageBox.Show(Mgmt("Caption").ToString)
            End If
        Next

For the list of properties for the Win32_LogicalDisk class, check here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/de...ogicaldisk.asp

I couldnt test it on a network drive, as I have none, but a drivetype of "5" worked fine for me.

Isn't that VB code rather than .NET code? The ManagementObject class in .NET doesn't seem to have the drivetype property. It also doesn't help me find the network path either. Thanks for trying though.

[gigemboy]

lol Of course its VB.NET silly Worked fine on my machine. The managementobject doesnt have that property.. its all part of the WMI OBJECT RETURNED for the WMI Class you specify... try the code out first before you think it doesnt work

***EDIT - also look above, I edited my post with the property that should show the network drive path

P.S. I also don't like being told "thanks for the effort" when it should do exactly what you stated

[sevenhalo]

Gig, stop biting your tongue

It was a good sugestion, .Net and legacy VB is very close (it almost scares you). Give his suggestion a legit try, don't pass it off. I find myself doing that alot, thinking VB6 people can't help me (not that he is), but they can... MS made it really easy to transition so it's very common to get legacy and .Net development confused.

[gigemboy]

Also should be obvious when I mention "add a reference to System.Management"... and I have never been a VB6 programmer

[Holywhippet]

lol Of course its VB.NET silly Worked fine on my machine. The managementobject doesnt have that property.. its all part of the WMI OBJECT RETURNED for the WMI Class you specify... try the code out first before you think it doesnt work

***EDIT - also look above, I edited my post with the property that should show the network drive path

P.S. I also don't like being told "thanks for the effort" when it should do exactly what you stated

It works fine, thanks. I wasn't sure because the quote tag about your code said "visual basic code" rather than .NET code (and the bit at the bottom says assume all code is .NET unless stated otherwise). I also always use Msgbox rather than MessageBox - on top of it all, I never did much programming in VB6 so I'm not always sure what to look for.

Thanks for the help.

[gigemboy]

hehe no prob. Messagebox.Show is actually more correct to use in .NET. MsgBox is a runtime function carried over from VB6.

(and the "visual basic code" is put in by the forum software when you use the vbcode tags)