A few months ago I was given a project to maintain a corporate website. This website was previously hosted in a CMS in remote site. When I received the CD containing the project files, it was already in ‘offline’ website format. It means all files are now static HTML. I suspect that it generated using those website downloaders (Offline Explorer, etc.).

The problem with static HTML website is there are many duplicates of information. One news article will show up as many files that located in different folders. It could be under News folder, News Archive folder, Tags folder, etc.

It means my task will become a boring headache, since I will need to add content, add it to the respective folders, and manually update all the linkage regularly.

So I came out with a simple program to help me generating the content, upload the attachment and to update the linkage. This is when I hit the problem. Because most of the time, a news article will contain attachments. The attachments will be stored under Attachments folder, but the pages that linked to that attachment are scattered all over the place. I also need to update the ‘index’ files of each category (Archive by Year, Archive by Tag, Archive by Category, etc.)

Solution

Instead of reinventing the wheel, I asked Google to find me the wheel 😀 David M. Howard has solved this problem 9 years ago 🙂 Thank You David!

His solution was written in Java, I just need to convert it to .NET and tweaked it a little without any difficulties.

Result

The output of the test program are as follows:

Source Code

'Filename: MyPath.vb
Imports System.IO
Imports System.Collections

Public Class MyPath
    Public Shared Function getRelativePath(ByVal home As String, ByVal remote As String) As String
        Return getRelativePath(New FileInfo(home), New FileInfo(remote))
    End Function
    Public Shared Function getRelativepath(ByVal home As String, ByRef remote As FileInfo) As String
        Return getRelativepath(New FileInfo(home), remote)
    End Function
    Public Shared Function getRelativePath(ByRef home As FileInfo, ByVal remote As String) As String
        Return getRelativePath(home, New FileInfo(remote))
    End Function

    Public Shared Function getRelativePath(ByRef home As FileInfo, ByRef remote As FileInfo) As String
        Dim homepathList As New ArrayList
        Dim remotePathList As New ArrayList
        Dim result As String = ""

        If ((home.Exists And remote.Exists) Or home.Directory.Exists Or remote.Directory.Exists) Then
            'initialize the paths
            initPathList(home.Directory, homepathList)

            If remote.Attributes = FileAttributes.Directory Then
                initPathList(remote.Directory, remotePathList)
            Else
                initPathList(remote, remotePathList)
            End If

            Dim ihome As Integer = homepathList.Count - 1
            Dim iremote As Integer = remotePathList.Count - 1

            'Do we have common parent
            If Not homepathList(ihome).Equals(remotePathList(iremote)) Then
                Return remote.FullName
            End If

            'remove common parent            
            While (ihome >= 0 And iremote >= 0)
                If homepathList(ihome).Equals(remotePathList(iremote)) Then
                    ihome -= 1
                    iremote -= 1
                Else
                    Exit While
                End If
            End While

            'Add relative path
            While ihome >= 0
                result &= ".." & System.IO.Path.DirectorySeparatorChar.ToString()
                ihome -= 1
            End While

            'Combine relative path result with the remote 

            While iremote > 0
                result &= remotePathList(iremote).ToString() & System.IO.Path.DirectorySeparatorChar.ToString()
                iremote -= 1
            End While
            result &= remotePathList(iremote).ToString()
        Else
            If Not home.Exists Then
                Throw New Exception(home.FullName & " is not exist!")
            End If
            If Not remote.Exists Then
                Throw New Exception(remote.FullName & " is not exist!")
            End If
        End If
        Return result
    End Function
    Public Shared Sub initPathList(ByRef f As FileInfo, ByRef ar As ArrayList)
        ar.Add(f.Name)
        initPathList(f.Directory, ar)
    End Sub
    Public Shared Sub initPathList(ByRef dir As DirectoryInfo, ByRef ar As ArrayList)
        ar.Add(dir.Name)
        While Not dir.Parent Is Nothing
            dir = dir.Parent
            ar.Add(dir.Name)
        End While
    End Sub
End Class

'Filename: testMyPath.vb
Imports System.IO

Module Module1

    Sub Main()
        While True
            Console.Write("Home: ")
            Dim homePath As String = Console.ReadLine()
            Console.Write("Remote: ")
            Dim remotePath As String = Console.ReadLine()
            Try
                Console.WriteLine("Relative Path: " & MyIO.MyPath.getRelativePath(homePath, remotePath))
            Catch ex As Exception
                Console.WriteLine("ERROR: " & ex.ToString())
            End Try
            Console.WriteLine()
        End While
    End Sub

End Module

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