home-dir

Crossplatform source code (C++11) to get path of the home directory and configuration files storage folder. The home-dir code outputs paths as a string of char, i.e. in ASCII or UTF8 format. There are also special functions for Windows to get paths as a string of wide characters.
An example of home-dir paths output is shown in the “Example of usage” section.

Supports Windows and Linux.

Usage

To get the path of the home directory, invoke the function:

std::string HomeDirLibrary::GetHomeDir();

To get the path of the folder where you can store configuration files, invoke the function:

std::string HomeDirLibrary::GetDataDir();

You can also use the “wide” version of the functions (Windows-only):

std::wstring HomeDirLibrary::GetHomeDirW();
std::wstring HomeDirLibrary::GetDataDirW();

The functions return the requested paths. In case of errors, the functions return empty strings.

Installing

You should copy the source files (src/home-dir.h, src/home-dir.cpp) to your project.

Example of usage

There is test cmake project in ‘test’ folder. It shows result of usage of the functions:

Windows 10:

Home directory: 'C:\Users\username'
Local application data directory: 'C:\Users\username\AppData\Local'
Windows wide paths:
Wide Home directory: 'C:\Users\username'
Wide Local application data directory: 'C:\Users\username\AppData\Local'

Linux:

Home directory: '/home/username'
Local application data directory: '/home/username/.config'

Authors

Evgeny Kislov - evgenykislov.com, github/evgenykislov

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details

Notes

The code is intentionally made as non header-only, due to including of system headers (especially Windows.h) can add some troubles to your code.

The Windows implementation uses the version of system functions that limits the path length to MAX_PATH (about 256 characters).