README.md

Griffin+ Temporary Folder Manager

Overview

The Temporary Folder Manager is a helper that comes in handy when juggling around with temporary folders on .NET. Temporary folders tend to orphan and accumulate over time wasting disk space. The Temporary Folder Manager keeps track of temporary folders and cleans up orphaned folders, if appropriate.

Supported Platforms

The library is entirely written in C# using .NET Standard 2.0.

More specific builds for .NET Standard 2.1, .NET Framework 4.6.1, .NET 5.0, .NET 6.0, .NET 7.0 and .NET 8.0 minimize dependencies to framework components and provide optimizations for the different frameworks.

Therefore it should work on the following platforms (or higher):

• .NET Framework 4.6.1
• .NET Core 2/3
• .NET 5/6/7/8
• Mono 5.4
• Xamarin iOS 10.14
• Xamarin Mac 3.8
• Xamarin Android 8.0
• Universal Windows Platform (UWP) 10.0.16299

The library is tested automatically on the following frameworks and operating systems:

• .NET Framework 4.6.1: Tests with library built for .NET Framework 4.6.1 (Windows Server 2022)
• .NET Framework 4.8: Tests with library built for .NET Framework 4.6.1 (Windows Server 2022)
• .NET Core 2.2: Tests with library built for .NET Standard 2.0 (Windows Server 2022 and Ubuntu 22.04)
• .NET Core 3.1: Tests with library built for .NET Standard 2.1 (Windows Server 2022 and Ubuntu 22.04)
• .NET 5.0: Tests with library built for .NET 5.0 (Windows Server 2022 and Ubuntu 22.04)
• .NET 6.0: Tests with library built for .NET 6.0 (Windows Server 2022 and Ubuntu 22.04)
• .NET 7.0: Tests with library built for .NET 7.0 (Windows Server 2022 and Ubuntu 22.04)
• .NET 8.0: Tests with library built for .NET 8.0 (Windows Server 2022 and Ubuntu 22.04)

Using

Step 1: Get/Create the Temporary Folder Manager

You can either create a new instance of the TemporaryFolderManager class passing a path to a base directory where temporary folders and management information are stored or simply call the static property TemporaryFolderManager.Default to get access to the default instance working on top of the user's temporary directory. It is safe to use multiple instances of the TemporaryFolderManager class on the same base directory as lock files guard the temporary folders and prevent cleaning up folders that are still in use.

Step 2: Create a temporary folder

To create a temporary folder you only need to call the CreateTemporaryFolder() on the manager instance which returns a management object for the temporary folder (ITemporaryFolder).

Step 3: Use the temporary folder

Work with the temporary folder. The path to the folder can be retrieved via the FolderPath property of the management object.

Step 4: Release the temporary folder

At last you should dispose the management object to delete the temporary folder. If you forget to do this, creating the next TemporaryFolderManager instance with the same base directory will clean up orphaned folders.

Nevertheless, to ensure everything is cleaned up properly, you should put your code in a using statement as follows:

using GriffinPlus.Lib;

// create a temporary folder in the default base directory
// (the folder is deleted automatically when disposing the ITemporaryFolder object)
using (ITemporaryFolder folder = TemporaryFolderManager.Default.CreateTemporaryFolder())
{
    Console.WriteLine("Successfully created temporary folder: {0}", folder.FolderPath);
    // ...
    // use the temporary folder
    // ...
}

// create a temporary folder in a custom base directory (relative to working directory)
// (the folder is deleted automatically when disposing the ITemporaryFolder object)
TemporaryFolderManager manager = new TemporaryFolderManager("Temporary Folders");
using (ITemporaryFolder folder = manager.CreateTemporaryFolder())
{
    Console.WriteLine("Successfully created temporary folder: {0}", folder.FolderPath);
    // ...
    // use the temporary folder
    // ...
}