blame: README.md

# PlatformFolders

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

# 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.

# 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

Currently not supported. The Mac OS X C++ documentation is very slim and I could not get FSFindFolder to work (I need to link against something). As a result you will simply get the XDG defined folders if you try to use compile it on Mac.

If someone could tell me what I need to link to get "_FSFindFolder" I'll add support for Mac as well.

# 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

```

# 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.