C# Programming Tutorials

What exactly is a temporary file? Put simply, a temporary file is a file used by an application for storing temporary data. There is no fixed rule which specifies what this data should be, but generally temporary files (or temp files) are used for storing ‘work data‘. For example Microsoft Office uses temp files to store backups of documents being created or edited. Other applications might use temp files to store large amounts of data which would otherwise occupy too much memory. Basically, it is up to the developer to decide what should be kept within his/her application’s temp files.

In Microsoft Windows, temp files end with the .tmp extension and by default are stored in C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\Temp.

The .NET Framework makes creating and using temp files a breeze, so let me show you how to use them.

Create a new Console Application and add a method called CreateTmpFile. In this method we will use the System.IO.Path class to create our temp file.

private static string CreateTmpFile()
{
    string fileName = string.Empty;

    try
    {
        // Get the full name of the newly created Temporary file.
        // Note that the GetTempFileName() method actually creates
        // a 0-byte file and returns the name of the created file.
        fileName = Path.GetTempFileName();

        // Craete a FileInfo object to set the file's attributes
        FileInfo fileInfo = new FileInfo(fileName);

        // Set the Attribute property of this file to Temporary.
        // Although this is not completely necessary, the .NET Framework is able
        // to optimize the use of Temporary files by keeping them cached in memory.
        fileInfo.Attributes = FileAttributes.Temporary;

        Console.WriteLine("TEMP file created at: " + fileName);
    }
    catch (Exception ex)
    {
       Console.WriteLine("Unable to create TEMP file or set its attributes: " + ex.Message);
    }

    return fileName;
}

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