Mapping network drives

Question

Is there any possible way to map network drives in WPF / MAUI (i think it will work the same for both but i need it for WPF)

I have some ideas (but I didn't find anything online):

1. Use some class / library to do that. Use just simple methods for mapping disk and working with it later when I will need it. It will solve lots of problems.

2. Use windows commands to map it. I will write cmd / powerShell commands to connect network disk and later use some class from WPF to launch this command / write this command to file and later execute it.

Are there any options. 1. option will be best form me, but I don't know if it is possible. So give me some sources? Any ideas?

Answer 1

This blog post suggests that you could use the WNetAddConnection2 Win32 API to map a network drive programmatically:

private enum ResourceScope
{
    RESOURCE_CONNECTED = 1,
    RESOURCE_GLOBALNET,
    RESOURCE_REMEMBERED,
    RESOURCE_RECENT,
    RESOURCE_CONTEXT
}
private enum ResourceType
{
    RESOURCETYPE_ANY,
    RESOURCETYPE_DISK,
    RESOURCETYPE_PRINT,
    RESOURCETYPE_RESERVED
}
private enum ResourceUsage
{
    RESOURCEUSAGE_CONNECTABLE = 0x00000001,
    RESOURCEUSAGE_CONTAINER = 0x00000002,
    RESOURCEUSAGE_NOLOCALDEVICE = 0x00000004,
    RESOURCEUSAGE_SIBLING = 0x00000008,
    RESOURCEUSAGE_ATTACHED = 0x00000010
}
private enum ResourceDisplayType
{
    RESOURCEDISPLAYTYPE_GENERIC,
    RESOURCEDISPLAYTYPE_DOMAIN,
    RESOURCEDISPLAYTYPE_SERVER,
    RESOURCEDISPLAYTYPE_SHARE,
    RESOURCEDISPLAYTYPE_FILE,
    RESOURCEDISPLAYTYPE_GROUP,
    RESOURCEDISPLAYTYPE_NETWORK,
    RESOURCEDISPLAYTYPE_ROOT,
    RESOURCEDISPLAYTYPE_SHAREADMIN,
    RESOURCEDISPLAYTYPE_DIRECTORY,
    RESOURCEDISPLAYTYPE_TREE,
    RESOURCEDISPLAYTYPE_NDSCONTAINER
}

[StructLayout(LayoutKind.Sequential)]
private struct NETRESOURCE
{
    public ResourceScope oResourceScope;
    public ResourceType oResourceType;
    public ResourceDisplayType oDisplayType;
    public ResourceUsage oResourceUsage;
    public string sLocalName;
    public string sRemoteName;
    public string sComments;
    public string sProvider;
}

[DllImport("mpr.dll")]
private static extern int WNetAddConnection2(ref NETRESOURCE oNetworkResource, string sPassword, string sUserName, int iFlags);

public static void MapNetworkDrive(string sDriveLetter, string sNetworkPath)
{
    //Checks if the last character is \ as this causes error on mapping a drive.
    if (sNetworkPath.Substring(sNetworkPath.Length - 1, 1) == @"\")
    {
        sNetworkPath = sNetworkPath.Substring(0, sNetworkPath.Length - 1);
    }

    NETRESOURCE oNetworkResource = new NETRESOURCE();
    oNetworkResource.oResourceType = ResourceType.RESOURCETYPE_DISK;
    oNetworkResource.sLocalName = sDriveLetter + ":";
    oNetworkResource.sRemoteName = sNetworkPath;

    WNetAddConnection2(ref oNetworkResource, null, null, 0);
}