How to programmatically derive Windows Downloads folder "%USERPROFILE%/Downloads"?

Question

In .NET, we can retrieve the paths to 'special folders', like Documents / Desktop etc. Today I tried to find a way to get the path to the 'Downloads' folder, but it's not special enough it seems.

I know I can just do 'C:\Users\Username\Downloads', but that seems an ugly solution. So how can I retrieve the path using .NET?

Answer 1

Yes it is special, discovering the name of this folder didn't become possible until Vista. .NET still needs to support prior operating systems. You can pinvoke SHGetKnownFolderPath() to bypass this limitation, like this:

using System.Runtime.InteropServices;
...

public static string GetDownloadsPath() {
    if (Environment.OSVersion.Version.Major < 6) throw new NotSupportedException();
    IntPtr pathPtr = IntPtr.Zero;
    try {
        SHGetKnownFolderPath(ref FolderDownloads, 0, IntPtr.Zero, out pathPtr);
        return Marshal.PtrToStringUni(pathPtr);
    }
    finally {
        Marshal.FreeCoTaskMem(pathPtr);
    }
}

private static Guid FolderDownloads = new Guid("374DE290-123F-4565-9164-39C4925E467B");
[DllImport("shell32.dll", CharSet = CharSet.Auto)]
private static extern int SHGetKnownFolderPath(ref Guid id, int flags, IntPtr token, out IntPtr path);