How to bundle files in MAUI?

Question

I'm trying to access files in MAUI and I know I should bundle them but I don't know how to do it. In what directory should I place the file? When I bundle it, how should I write the path of the file?

Answer 1

1. Place the files you want to bundle in Resources\Raw\ folder within your project. I could not get other locations to work.

2. Mark the files with Build Action = MauiAsset, and select an option for Copy to Output Directory (always or newer)

3. access them by relative path only (so for most files you will only use the raw file name):

   using (Stream instream = FileSystem.Current.OpenAppPackageFileAsync(fileName))

4. read the contents with StreamReader or BinaryReader.

I needed to copy the files to my app data directory and what did NOT work was using a ByteArrayContent.ReadAsByteArray (it hangs) and instream.CopyToAsync (it also hangs). To copy files you could use the approach described here:

.Net Maui copying assets into appData

Based on your comment, you don't want to use async, but there is only OpenAppPackageFileAsync available.

you could put this in an async function

async Task GetMyAssets() { ... }

then call it from a synchronous function like this:

GetMyAssets().GetAwaiter().GetResult();