Creating folders with current time as the folder name

Question

Hello all. I have been trying to create folders for database backup purposes. These folders were to be based on the current date and time as the name of the folder. This is the code I came up with:

    Sub Backup()
        Try
            Dim FolderName As String
            Dim PathCreate As String
            Dim BackupDate As String
            Dim ActionDate As Date
            Dim Datea As New DateTimePicker

            Datea.Format = DateTimePickerFormat.Short
            Datea.Value = Date.Today
            ActionDate = Datea.Value.ToString
            BackupDate = Datea.Value.ToString
            Directory.CreateDirectory("C:/Database Backup")
            PathCreate = "C:/Database Backup/Backup - " + BackupDate
            Directory.CreateDirectory(PathCreate)

            File.Copy("C:/Users/Honourable Majiwa_2/Desktop/stadiadatabase.mdb", +PathCreate + "/stadiadatabase.mdb")
        Catch ex As Exception
            MsgBox(ex.Message, MsgBoxStyle.Critical, "Backup Error!")
        End Try
    End Sub

However, I experience an error when the code is executed. The message given is:

                      "The given path's format is not supported!"

What could be the problem? Any help given would be most appreciated. Thank you in advance

 

Answer 1

Hi,

check the value of your BackupDate variable. It mustn`t contain the following chars: /\:#?"<>|

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Hannes

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Answer 2

Instead of following line

BackupDate = Datea.Value.ToString

you can use this and try

BackupDate =  Datea.Value.ToString("yyyy-MM-dd hh-mm-ss")

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Thanks and Regards, Bharath S.

Answer 3

Please note that the directory separator character is \ on Windows. Also, the string concatenation operator is &

HTH,

Andrew

Answer 4

Please note that the directory separator character is \ on Windows.

Good point, i didn`t recognize this ;-)

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Hannes

If you have got questions about this, just ask.
Mark the thread as answered if the answer helps you. This helps others who have the same problem !
C# to VB.NET: http://www.developerfusion.com/tools/convert/csharp-to-vb/

Answer 5

Hi Cescontita,

check this for more Path information:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.io.path.aspx

there is a methode getinvalidfilenamechars

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.io.path.getinvalidfilenamechars.aspx

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Answer 6

I knew that the backslash was the problem. I had earlier tried declaring a variable as a DateTimePicker control and set the format to Short. This however did not solve my problem.

Answer 7

I noticed that it instead created sub folders with the month and year as their names.

Answer 8

Thank you Bharath. I also tweaked the code you gave me a bit and this is the code as I actually visualised it:

BackupDate = Datea.ToString("dd-MM-yyyy hh.mm")

So this gave me the folder with the actual date and time.

Your insight was very helpful.