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

The problem of your first answer is it would give you WRONG result if the default Downloads Dir has been changed to [Download1]! The proper way to do it covering all possibilities is

using System;
using System.Runtime.InteropServices;

static class cGetEnvVars_WinExp    {
    [DllImport("Shell32.dll")] private static extern int SHGetKnownFolderPath(
        [MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.LPStruct)]Guid rfid, uint dwFlags, IntPtr hToken,
        out IntPtr ppszPath);

    [Flags] public enum KnownFolderFlags : uint { SimpleIDList = 0x00000100
        , NotParentRelative = 0x00000200, DefaultPath = 0x00000400, Init = 0x00000800
        , NoAlias = 0x00001000, DontUnexpand = 0x00002000, DontVerify = 0x00004000
        , Create = 0x00008000,NoAppcontainerRedirection = 0x00010000, AliasOnly = 0x80000000
    }
    public static string GetPath(string RegStrName, KnownFolderFlags flags, bool defaultUser) {
        IntPtr outPath;
        int result = 
            SHGetKnownFolderPath (
                new Guid(RegStrName), (uint)flags, new IntPtr(defaultUser ? -1 : 0), out outPath
            );
        if (result >= 0)            {
            return Marshal.PtrToStringUni(outPath);
        } else {
            throw new ExternalException("Unable to retrieve the known folder path. It may not "
                + "be available on this system.", result);
        }
    }

}   

To test it, if you specifically desire your personal download dir, you flag default to false -->

using System.IO;

class Program    {
    [STAThread]
    static void Main(string[] args)        {
        string path2Downloads = string.Empty;
        path2Downloads = 
            cGetEnvVars_WinExp.GetPath("{374DE290-123F-4565-9164-39C4925E467B}", cGetEnvVars_WinExp.KnownFolderFlags.DontVerify, false);
        string[] files = { "" };
        if (Directory.Exists(path2Downloads)) {
            files = Directory.GetFiles(path2Downloads);
        }
    }