How to get a file's last modified date in ASP.NET Core MVC?

Question

I'm porting a small MVC 5 website to MVC 6 to spot breaking changes. Stuff is breaking.

The MVC 5 code uses @File.GetLastWriteTime(this.Server.MapPath(this.VirtualPath)) to get the timestamp, as recommended here. Apparently in MVC 6, the .cshtml page no longer has Server or VirtualPath members. What's the new incantation?

Answer 1

Revisiting my own question 18 months later... the framework is now ASP.NET Core 2.0 MVC and it seems the framework, documentation and best practices have changed a bit.

You should use a FileProvider as described in the MS docs. There's no point in recreating that article here, but be sure to:

• Add an IHostingEnvironment to the Startup constructor parameters, and save it off in a local variable, as described in the docs
• In Startup.ConfigureServices(), call services.AddSingleton(HostingEnvironment.ContentRootFileProvider); to register an IFileProvider service, also described in the docs
• Add an IFileProvider to the controller's constructor parameters, and save it off in a local variable

Then to actually get the last modified date, the controller will look something like this:

public class HomeController : Controller
{
    private IFileProvider _fileProvider;

    public HomeController(IFileProvider fileProvider)
    {
        _fileProvider = fileProvider;
    }

    public IActionResult Index()
    {
        DateTimeOffset lastModifiedDate = _fileProvider.GetFileInfo(@"Views\Home\Index.cshtml").LastModified;
        // use it wisely...
        return View();
    }