blame: README.md

# PlatformFolders [![Build Status](https://travis-ci.org/sago007/PlatformFolders.svg?branch=master)](https://travis-ci.org/sago007/PlatformFolders)

A self contained C++ abstraction library so that you do not need to have Linux, Windows and Mac OS X specific code to look for special directories

Can be found at: https://github.com/sago007/PlatformFolders

# Rationale

There are a lot of platform abstraction libraries available. You can get graphics abstraction libraries, GUI abstraction libraries and file abstraction libraries.

But folder abstraction seems to be more difficult.

My problem was that the code that found the place to save data was platform dependent. This cluttered my code and often I would not discover that it did not compile until moving it to the different platforms.

I have written a bit more about it here: http://sago007.blogspot.dk/2015/10/abstraction-for-special-folders.html

There are some alternatives that you might consider instead:

  * QStandardPaths - http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qstandardpaths.html 

  * glib - https://developer.gnome.org/glib/stable/glib-Miscellaneous-Utility-Functions.html

Both are properly more mature than this library. However they are both parts of large frameworks and using them with libraries outside the framework may not be that simple. 

# Windows support

For Windows the folders are fetched using SHGetFolderPath.

The amount of supported folders differ from Windows version and this library targets XP and newer... and I'll drop XP support very soon. 

Currently "Save Games" and "Downloads" should not be used as they are undefined on XP. 

# Linux support

In Linux a lot of these folders are not official defined. However this library uses XDG user dirs.

# Mac OS X support

Uses the deprecated FSFindFolder (there is no C++ alternative). It requires "-framework CoreServices" during linking.

# Usage

Copy "sago/platform_files.cpp" and "sago/platform_fildes.h" to your program and make sure that the cpp file is compiled and linked.

# Hello World

This sample program gets all folders from the system:

```

#include <iostream>

#include "sago/platform_folders.h"

using namespace std;

using namespace sago;

int main()

{

	cout << "Config: " << getConfigHome() << endl;

	cout << "Data: " << getDataHome() << endl;

	cout << "Cache: " << getCacheDir() << endl;

	PlatformFolders p;

	cout << "Documents: " << p.getDocumentsFolder() << endl;

	cout << "Desktop: " << p.getDesktopFolder() << endl;

	cout << "Pictures: " << p.getPicturesFolder() << endl;

	cout << "Music: " << p.getMusicFolder() << endl;

	cout << "Video: " << p.getVideoFolder() << endl;

	cout << "Download: " << p.getDownloadFolder1() << endl;

	cout << "Save Games 1: " << p.getSaveGamesFolder1() << endl;

	return 0;

}

```

The output on Linux would look like this:

```

Config: /home/poul/.config

Data: /home/poul/.local/share

Cache: /home/poul/.cache

Documents: /home/poul/Dokumenter

Desktop: /home/poul/Skrivebord

Pictures: /home/poul/Billeder

Music: /home/poul/Musik

Video: /home/poul/Videoklip

Download: /home/poul/Hentede filer

Save Games 1: /home/poul/.local/share

```

On Windows it could be:

```

Config: C:\users\poul\Application Data

Data: C:\users\poul\Application Data

Cache: C:\users\poul\Local Settings\Application Data

Documents: C:\users\poul\Mine dokumenter

Desktop: C:\users\poul\Skrivebord

Pictures: C:\users\poul\Mine Billeder

Music: C:\users\poul\Min Musik

Video: C:\users\poul\Mine Film

Download: C:\users\poul\Skrivebord

Save Games 1: C:\users\poul\Mine dokumenter\My Games

```

On Mac OS X it could be:

```

Config: /Users/poul/Library/Application Support

Data: /Users/poul/Library/Application Support

Cache: /Users/poul/Library/Caches

Documents: /Users/poul/Documents

Desktop: /Users/poul/Desktop

Pictures: /Users/poul/Pictures

Music: /Users/poul/Music

Video: /Users/poul/Movies

Download: /Users/poul/Downloads

Save Games 1: /Users/poul/Library/Application Support

```

# Encoding

For Windows ANSI encoding is always used. Microsoft's implementation of "Unicode" is simply not compatible with platform independent code.

For all other systems the local encoding is used. For most systems this is UTF-8.

Generally you should only append simple ASCII chars to the paths. 

# Licence 

Provided under the MIT license for the same reason XDG is licenced under it. So that you can quickly copy-paste the methods you need or just include the "sago"-folder.