Determine User OneDrive Folders Without The Microsoft.OneDriveSDK

Recently while working on my dotNetTips.Utility Dev App, I realized I was determining the location of the users OneDrive folder wrong, especially if they have more than one OneDrive account, like myself. I didn't want to go through the hassle of learning the Microsoft.OneDriveSDK, nor did I want to use an entire SDK just to figure this out.

Recently while working on my dotNetTips.Utility Dev App, I realized I was determining the location of the user's OneDrive folder wrong, especially if they have more than one OneDrive account, like myself. I didn't want to go through the hassle of learning the Microsoft.OneDriveSDK, nor did I want to use an entire SDK just to figure this out.

Recently while looking at the Windows Registration Database, I noticed that OneDrive stores this information there. After figuring out the differences between in the info stored for personal and business accounts, I came up with a method to retrieve this info for me. Here is what it looks like.

/// <summary>
/// Loads the one drive folders.
/// </summary>
/// <returns>IEnumerable<OneDriveFolder>.</returns>
public static IEnumerable < OneDriveFolder > LoadOneDriveFolders() {
    const string DisplayNameKey = "DisplayName";
    const string UserFolderKey = "UserFolder";
    const string AccountsKey = "Accounts";
    const string EmailKey = "UserEmail";
    var folders = new List < OneDriveFolder > ();
    var oneDriveKey = RegistryHelper.GetCurrentUserRegistryKey(RegistryHelper.KeyCurrentUserOneDrive);
    if (oneDriveKey.IsNotNull()) {
        //Get Accounts
        var accountKey = oneDriveKey.GetSubKey(AccountsKey);
        if (accountKey.IsNotNull() && accountKey.SubKeyCount > 0) {
            foreach(var subKeyName in accountKey.GetSubKeyNames()) {
                var key = accountKey.GetSubKey(subKeyName);
                var folder = new OneDriveFolder();
                var directoryValue = key.GetValue < string > (UserFolderKey);
                if (directoryValue.HasValue()) {
                    folder.DirectoryInfo = new DirectoryInfo(directoryValue);
                    var emailValue = key.GetValue < string > (EmailKey);
                    if (emailValue.HasValue()) {
                        folder.UserEmail = emailValue;
                    }
                    //Figure out account type
                    var name = key.GetValue < string > (DisplayNameKey);
                    if (name.HasValue()) {
                        folder.AccountType = OneDriveAccountType.Business;
                        folder.AccountName = name;
                    } else {
                        folder.AccountName = key.GetValue < string > (string.Empty);
                    }
                    if (folder.AccountName.HasValue() && folder.UserEmail.HasValue()) {
                        folders.Add(folder);
                    }
                }
            }
        }
    }
    return folders.AsEnumerable();
}

I wrote this method in .NET Standard, so I had to install the Microsoft.Win32.Registry NuGet package first. Also, you might see some methods that you might not recognize. They are all from my open-source library, that includes the full code for this method, dotNetTips.Utility.Standard on GitHub and also available via a NuGet package.

With this code my app now properly chooses the user's OneDrive folder, where it favors the first business account it finds.