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Overview

Serfs is a Simple Embedded Resource File System for .Net

Embedded resources are files in a .Net Assembly which have their Build Action Property set to Embedded Resource. They can be placed in a directory-like structure.

Serfs provides simple read-only access to such files in a way similar to reading files from disk.

e.g.

  Stream stream = serfs.OpenRead("files/test.txt")
  string sb = serfs.Read("./test.txt");
  string st = serfs.ReadText("test.txt");

You can tell Serfs which assemblies contain files, and which files to include. The files are merged into one collection so that they can be accessed as one virtual disk. You can create as many virtual disks as you like – just create separate instances.

The quickest way to explore in full what Serfs can do is to look at the unit tests in TestSerfs/TestSerfs.cs or the Examples

Notes

• Paths and file names are case-insensitive.
• You can use forward / or back \ slashes are directory separators.
• Although Serfs uses a traditional folder/filename or folder\filename path convention, embedded resources are actually stored with . separators. There are other name adjustments too, such as spaces and - being as _. Serfs will try to find the correct file, but it won’t be able to differentiate between, say, A file and A_file

Security

The content of the embedded resources in an assembly is easily read by external programs.

If you want to avoid shipping sensitive information in plain-text, you can encode the file content before you build the assembly. You can then supply a decode routine to Serfs, and it will perform the decoding on the fly.

Contents

This repository contains 3 projects:

1. Serfs : The core Serfs dll.
2. TestSerfs : Tests for Serfs. Uses Gallio / MbUnit. Can be used as a reference for the API.
3. ResourcesForSerfsTest : A DLL containing no code, just embedded resources for TestSerfs.