Path.Combine for URLs?

Question

Path.Combine is handy, but is there a similar function in the .NET framework for URLs?

I'm looking for syntax like this:

Url.Combine("http://MyUrl.com/", "/Images/Image.jpg")

which would return:

"http://MyUrl.com/Images/Image.jpg"

Answer 1

There is a Todd Menier's comment above that Flurl includes a Url.Combine.

More details:

Url.Combine is basically a Path.Combine for URLs, ensuring one and only one separator character between parts:

var url = Url.Combine(
    "http://MyUrl.com/",
    "/too/", "/many/", "/slashes/",
    "too", "few?",
    "x=1", "y=2"
// result: "http://www.MyUrl.com/too/many/slashes/too/few?x=1&y=2" 

Get Flurl.Http on NuGet:

PM> Install-Package Flurl.Http

Or get the stand-alone URL builder without the HTTP features:

PM> Install-Package Flurl

Answer 2

Uri has a constructor that should do this for you: new Uri(Uri baseUri, string relativeUri)

Here's an example:

Uri baseUri = new Uri("http://www.contoso.com");
Uri myUri = new Uri(baseUri, "catalog/shownew.htm");

Note from editor: Beware, this method does not work as expected. It can cut part of baseUri in some cases. See comments and other answers.

Answer 3

This may be a suitably simple solution:

public static string Combine(string uri1, string uri2)
{
    uri1 = uri1.TrimEnd('/');
    uri2 = uri2.TrimStart('/');
    return string.Format("{0}/{1}", uri1, uri2);
}

Answer 4

You use Uri.TryCreate( ... ) :

Uri result = null;

if (Uri.TryCreate(new Uri("http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/"), "/en-us/library/system.uri.trycreate.aspx", out result))
{
    Console.WriteLine(result);
}

Will return:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.uri.trycreate.aspx

Answer 5

There's already some great answers here. Based on mdsharpe suggestion, here's an extension method that can easily be used when you want to deal with Uri instances:

using System;
using System.Linq;

public static class UriExtensions
{
    public static Uri Append(this Uri uri, params string[] paths)
    {
        return new Uri(paths.Aggregate(uri.AbsoluteUri, (current, path) => string.Format("{0}/{1}", current.TrimEnd('/'), path.TrimStart('/'))));
    }
}

And usage example:

var url = new Uri("http://example.com/subpath/").Append("/part1/", "part2").AbsoluteUri;

This will produce http://example.com/subpath/part1/part2

Answer 6

Ryan Cook's answer is close to what I'm after and may be more appropriate for other developers. However, it adds http:// to the beginning of the string and in general it does a bit more formatting than I'm after.

Also, for my use cases, resolving relative paths is not important.

mdsharp's answer also contains the seed of a good idea, although that actual implementation needed a few more details to be complete. This is an attempt to flesh it out (and I'm using this in production):

C#

public string UrlCombine(string url1, string url2)
{
    if (url1.Length == 0) {
        return url2;
    }

    if (url2.Length == 0) {
        return url1;
    }

    url1 = url1.TrimEnd('/', '\\');
    url2 = url2.TrimStart('/', '\\');

    return string.Format("{0}/{1}", url1, url2);
}

VB.NET

Public Function UrlCombine(ByVal url1 As String, ByVal url2 As String) As String
    If url1.Length = 0 Then
        Return url2
    End If

    If url2.Length = 0 Then
        Return url1
    End If

    url1 = url1.TrimEnd("/"c, "\"c)
    url2 = url2.TrimStart("/"c, "\"c)

    Return String.Format("{0}/{1}", url1, url2)
End Function

This code passes the following test, which happens to be in VB:

<TestMethod()> Public Sub UrlCombineTest()
    Dim target As StringHelpers = New StringHelpers()

    Assert.IsTrue(target.UrlCombine("test1", "test2") = "test1/test2")
    Assert.IsTrue(target.UrlCombine("test1/", "test2") = "test1/test2")
    Assert.IsTrue(target.UrlCombine("test1", "/test2") = "test1/test2")
    Assert.IsTrue(target.UrlCombine("test1/", "/test2") = "test1/test2")
    Assert.IsTrue(target.UrlCombine("/test1/", "/test2/") = "/test1/test2/")
    Assert.IsTrue(target.UrlCombine("", "/test2/") = "/test2/")
    Assert.IsTrue(target.UrlCombine("/test1/", "") = "/test1/")
End Sub

Answer 7

Path.Combine does not work for me because there can be characters like "|" in QueryString arguments and therefore the URL, which will result in an ArgumentException.

I first tried the new Uri(Uri baseUri, string relativeUri) approach, which failed for me because of URIs like http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:SpecialPages:

new Uri(new Uri("http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/"), "Special:SpecialPages")

will result in Special:SpecialPages, because of the colon after Special that denotes a scheme.

So I finally had to take mdsharpe/Brian MacKays route and developed it a bit further to work with multiple URI parts:

public static string CombineUri(params string[] uriParts)
{
    string uri = string.Empty;
    if (uriParts != null && uriParts.Length > 0)
    {
        char[] trims = new char[] { '\\', '/' };
        uri = (uriParts[0] ?? string.Empty).TrimEnd(trims);
        for (int i = 1; i < uriParts.Length; i++)
        {
            uri = string.Format("{0}/{1}", uri.TrimEnd(trims), (uriParts[i] ?? string.Empty).TrimStart(trims));
        }
    }
    return uri;
}

Usage: CombineUri("http://www.mediawiki.org/", "wiki", "Special:SpecialPages")

Answer 8

Based on the sample URL you provided, I'm going to assume you want to combine URLs that are relative to your site.

Based on this assumption I'll propose this solution as the most appropriate response to your question which was: "Path.Combine is handy, is there a similar function in the framework for URLs?"

Since there the is a similar function in the framework for URLs I propose the correct is: "VirtualPathUtility.Combine" method. Here's the MSDN reference link: VirtualPathUtility.Combine Method

There is one caveat: I believe this only works for URLs relative to your site (that is, you cannot use it to generate links to another web site. For example, var url = VirtualPathUtility.Combine("www.google.com", "accounts/widgets");).

Answer 9

Path.Combine("Http://MyUrl.com/", "/Images/Image.jpg").Replace("\\", "/")

Answer 10

I just put together a small extension method:

public static string UriCombine (this string val, string append)
        {
            if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(val)) return append;
            if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(append)) return val;
            return val.TrimEnd('/') + "/" + append.TrimStart('/');
        }

It can be used like this:

"www.example.com/".UriCombine("/images").UriCombine("first.jpeg");

Answer 11

Witty example, Ryan, to end with a link to the function. Well done.

One recommendation Brian: if you wrap this code in a function, you may want to use a UriBuilder to wrap the base URL prior to the TryCreate call.

Otherwise, the base URL MUST include the scheme (where the UriBuilder will assume http://). Just a thought:

public string CombineUrl(string baseUrl, string relativeUrl) {
    UriBuilder baseUri = new UriBuilder(baseUrl);
    Uri newUri;

    if (Uri.TryCreate(baseUri.Uri, relativeUrl, out newUri))
        return newUri.ToString();
    else
        throw new ArgumentException("Unable to combine specified url values");
}

Answer 12

An easy way to combine them and ensure it's always correct is:

string.Format("{0}/{1}", Url1.Trim('/'), Url2);

Answer 13

Combining multiple parts of a URL could be a little bit tricky. You can use the two-parameter constructor Uri(baseUri, relativeUri), or you can use the Uri.TryCreate() utility function.

In either case, you might end up returning an incorrect result because these methods keep on truncating the relative parts off of the first parameter baseUri, i.e. from something like http://google.com/some/thing to http://google.com.

To be able to combine multiple parts into a final URL, you can copy the two functions below:

    public static string Combine(params string[] parts)
    {
        if (parts == null || parts.Length == 0) return string.Empty;

        var urlBuilder = new StringBuilder();
        foreach (var part in parts)
        {
            var tempUrl = tryCreateRelativeOrAbsolute(part);
            urlBuilder.Append(tempUrl);
        }
        return VirtualPathUtility.RemoveTrailingSlash(urlBuilder.ToString());
    }

    private static string tryCreateRelativeOrAbsolute(string s)
    {
        System.Uri uri;
        System.Uri.TryCreate(s, UriKind.RelativeOrAbsolute, out uri);
        string tempUrl = VirtualPathUtility.AppendTrailingSlash(uri.ToString());
        return tempUrl;
    }

Full code with unit tests to demonstrate usage can be found at https://uricombine.codeplex.com/SourceControl/latest#UriCombine/Uri.cs

I have unit tests to cover the three most common cases:

Answer 14

As found in other answers, either new Uri() or TryCreate() can do the tick. However, the base Uri has to end with / and the relative has to NOT begin with /; otherwise it will remove the trailing part of the base Url

I think this is best done as an extension method, i.e.

public static Uri Append(this Uri uri, string relativePath)
{
    var baseUri = uri.AbsoluteUri.EndsWith('/') ? uri : new Uri(uri.AbsoluteUri + '/');
    var relative = relativePath.StartsWith('/') ? relativePath.Substring(1) : relativePath;
    return new Uri(baseUri, relative);
}

and to use it:

var baseUri = new Uri("http://test.com/test/");
var combinedUri =  baseUri.Append("/Do/Something");

In terms of performance, this consumes more resources than it needs, because of the Uri class which does a lot of parsing and validation; a very rough profiling (Debug) did a million operations in about 2 seconds. This will work for most scenarios, however to be more efficient, it's better to manipulate everything as strings, this takes 125 milliseconds for 1 million operations. I.e.

public static string Append(this Uri uri, string relativePath)
{
    //avoid the use of Uri as it's not needed, and adds a bit of overhead.
    var absoluteUri = uri.AbsoluteUri; //a calculated property, better cache it
    var baseUri = absoluteUri.EndsWith('/') ? absoluteUri : absoluteUri + '/';
    var relative = relativePath.StartsWith('/') ? relativePath.Substring(1) : relativePath;
    return baseUri + relative;
}

And if you still want to return a URI, it takes around 600 milliseconds for 1 million operations.

public static Uri AppendUri(this Uri uri, string relativePath)
{
    //avoid the use of Uri as it's not needed, and adds a bit of overhead.
    var absoluteUri = uri.AbsoluteUri; //a calculated property, better cache it
    var baseUri = absoluteUri.EndsWith('/') ? absoluteUri : absoluteUri + '/';
    var relative = relativePath.StartsWith('/') ? relativePath.Substring(1) : relativePath;
    return new Uri(baseUri + relative);
}

I hope this helps.

Answer 15

I think this should give you more flexibility as you can deal with as many path segments as you want:

public static string UrlCombine(this string baseUrl, params string[] segments)
=> string.Join("/", new[] { baseUrl.TrimEnd('/') }.Concat(segments.Select(s => s.Trim('/'))));

Answer 16

I found UriBuilder worked really well for this sort of thing:

UriBuilder urlb = new UriBuilder("http", _serverAddress, _webPort, _filePath);
Uri url = urlb.Uri;
return url.AbsoluteUri;

See UriBuilder Class - MSDN for more constructors and documentation.

Answer 17

If you don't want to have a dependency like Flurl, you can use its source code:

    /// <summary>
    /// Basically a Path.Combine for URLs. Ensures exactly one '/' separates each segment,
    /// and exactly on '&amp;' separates each query parameter.
    /// URL-encodes illegal characters but not reserved characters.
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="parts">URL parts to combine.</param>
    public static string Combine(params string[] parts) {
        if (parts == null)
            throw new ArgumentNullException(nameof(parts));

        string result = "";
        bool inQuery = false, inFragment = false;

        string CombineEnsureSingleSeparator(string a, string b, char separator) {
            if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(a)) return b;
            if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(b)) return a;
            return a.TrimEnd(separator) + separator + b.TrimStart(separator);
        }

        foreach (var part in parts) {
            if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(part))
                continue;

            if (result.EndsWith("?") || part.StartsWith("?"))
                result = CombineEnsureSingleSeparator(result, part, '?');
            else if (result.EndsWith("#") || part.StartsWith("#"))
                result = CombineEnsureSingleSeparator(result, part, '#');
            else if (inFragment)
                result += part;
            else if (inQuery)
                result = CombineEnsureSingleSeparator(result, part, '&');
            else
                result = CombineEnsureSingleSeparator(result, part, '/');

            if (part.Contains("#")) {
                inQuery = false;
                inFragment = true;
            }
            else if (!inFragment && part.Contains("?")) {
                inQuery = true;
            }
        }
        return EncodeIllegalCharacters(result);
    }

    /// <summary>
    /// URL-encodes characters in a string that are neither reserved nor unreserved. Avoids encoding reserved characters such as '/' and '?'. Avoids encoding '%' if it begins a %-hex-hex sequence (i.e. avoids double-encoding).
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="s">The string to encode.</param>
    /// <param name="encodeSpaceAsPlus">If true, spaces will be encoded as + signs. Otherwise, they'll be encoded as %20.</param>
    /// <returns>The encoded URL.</returns>
    public static string EncodeIllegalCharacters(string s, bool encodeSpaceAsPlus = false) {
        if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(s))
            return s;

        if (encodeSpaceAsPlus)
            s = s.Replace(" ", "+");

        // Uri.EscapeUriString mostly does what we want - encodes illegal characters only - but it has a quirk
        // in that % isn't illegal if it's the start of a %-encoded sequence https://stackoverflow.com/a/47636037/62600

        // no % characters, so avoid the regex overhead
        if (!s.Contains("%"))
            return Uri.EscapeUriString(s);

        // pick out all %-hex-hex matches and avoid double-encoding 
        return Regex.Replace(s, "(.*?)((%[0-9A-Fa-f]{2})|$)", c => {
            var a = c.Groups[1].Value; // group 1 is a sequence with no %-encoding - encode illegal characters
            var b = c.Groups[2].Value; // group 2 is a valid 3-character %-encoded sequence - leave it alone!
            return Uri.EscapeUriString(a) + b;
        });
    }

Answer 18

I find the following useful and has the following features :

• Throws on null or white space
• Takes multiple params parameter for multiple Url segments
• throws on null or empty

Class

public static class UrlPath
{
   private static string InternalCombine(string source, string dest)
   {
      if (string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(source))
         throw new ArgumentException("Cannot be null or white space", nameof(source));

      if (string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(dest))
         throw new ArgumentException("Cannot be null or white space", nameof(dest));

      return $"{source.TrimEnd('/', '\\')}/{dest.TrimStart('/', '\\')}";
   }

   public static string Combine(string source, params string[] args) 
       => args.Aggregate(source, InternalCombine);
}

Tests

UrlPath.Combine("test1", "test2");
UrlPath.Combine("test1//", "test2");
UrlPath.Combine("test1", "/test2");

// Result = test1/test2

UrlPath.Combine(@"test1\/\/\/", @"\/\/\\\\\//test2", @"\/\/\\\\\//test3\") ;

// Result = test1/test2/test3

UrlPath.Combine("/test1/", "/test2/", null);
UrlPath.Combine("", "/test2/");
UrlPath.Combine("/test1/", null);

// Throws an ArgumentException

Answer 19

My generic solution:

public static string Combine(params string[] uriParts)
{
    string uri = string.Empty;
    if (uriParts != null && uriParts.Any())
    {
        char[] trims = new char[] { '\\', '/' };
        uri = (uriParts[0] ?? string.Empty).TrimEnd(trims);

        for (int i = 1; i < uriParts.Length; i++)
        {
            uri = string.Format("{0}/{1}", uri.TrimEnd(trims), (uriParts[i] ?? string.Empty).TrimStart(trims));
        }
    }

    return uri;
}

Answer 20

Here's Microsoft's (OfficeDev PnP) method UrlUtility.Combine:

    const char PATH_DELIMITER = '/';

    /// <summary>
    /// Combines a path and a relative path.
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="path"></param>
    /// <param name="relative"></param>
    /// <returns></returns>
    public static string Combine(string path, string relative) 
    {
        if(relative == null)
            relative = String.Empty;

        if(path == null)
            path = String.Empty;

        if(relative.Length == 0 && path.Length == 0)
            return String.Empty;

        if(relative.Length == 0)
            return path;

        if(path.Length == 0)
            return relative;

        path = path.Replace('\\', PATH_DELIMITER);
        relative = relative.Replace('\\', PATH_DELIMITER);

        return path.TrimEnd(PATH_DELIMITER) + PATH_DELIMITER + relative.TrimStart(PATH_DELIMITER);
    }

Source: GitHub

Answer 21

I created this function that will make your life easier:

    /// <summary>
    /// The ultimate Path combiner of all time
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="IsURL">
    /// true - if the paths are Internet URLs, false - if the paths are local URLs, this is very important as this will be used to decide which separator will be used.
    /// </param>
    /// <param name="IsRelative">Just adds the separator at the beginning</param>
    /// <param name="IsFixInternal">Fix the paths from within (by removing duplicate separators and correcting the separators)</param>
    /// <param name="parts">The paths to combine</param>
    /// <returns>the combined path</returns>
    public static string PathCombine(bool IsURL , bool IsRelative , bool IsFixInternal , params string[] parts)
    {
        if (parts == null || parts.Length == 0) return string.Empty;
        char separator = IsURL ? '/' : '\\';

        if (parts.Length == 1 && IsFixInternal)
        {
            string validsingle;
            if (IsURL)
            {
                validsingle = parts[0].Replace('\\' , '/');
            }
            else
            {
                validsingle = parts[0].Replace('/' , '\\');
            }
            validsingle = validsingle.Trim(separator);
            return (IsRelative ? separator.ToString() : string.Empty) + validsingle;
        }

        string final = parts
            .Aggregate
            (
            (string first , string second) =>
            {
                string validfirst;
                string validsecond;
                if (IsURL)
                {
                    validfirst = first.Replace('\\' , '/');
                    validsecond = second.Replace('\\' , '/');
                }
                else
                {
                    validfirst = first.Replace('/' , '\\');
                    validsecond = second.Replace('/' , '\\');
                }
                var prefix = string.Empty;
                if (IsFixInternal)
                {
                    if (IsURL)
                    {
                        if (validfirst.Contains("://"))
                        {
                            var tofix = validfirst.Substring(validfirst.IndexOf("://") + 3);
                            prefix = validfirst.Replace(tofix , string.Empty).TrimStart(separator);

                            var tofixlist = tofix.Split(new[] { separator } , StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);

                            validfirst = separator + string.Join(separator.ToString() , tofixlist);
                        }
                        else
                        {
                            var firstlist = validfirst.Split(new[] { separator } , StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);
                            validfirst = string.Join(separator.ToString() , firstlist);
                        }

                        var secondlist = validsecond.Split(new[] { separator } , StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);
                        validsecond = string.Join(separator.ToString() , secondlist);
                    }
                    else
                    {
                        var firstlist = validfirst.Split(new[] { separator } , StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);
                        var secondlist = validsecond.Split(new[] { separator } , StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);

                        validfirst = string.Join(separator.ToString() , firstlist);
                        validsecond = string.Join(separator.ToString() , secondlist);
                    }
                }
                return prefix + validfirst.Trim(separator) + separator + validsecond.Trim(separator);
            }
            );
        return (IsRelative ? separator.ToString() : string.Empty) + final;
    }

It works for URLs as well as normal paths.

Usage:

    // Fixes internal paths
    Console.WriteLine(PathCombine(true , true , true , @"\/\/folder 1\/\/\/\\/\folder2\///folder3\\/" , @"/\somefile.ext\/\//\"));
    // Result: /folder 1/folder2/folder3/somefile.ext

    // Doesn't fix internal paths
    Console.WriteLine(PathCombine(true , true , false , @"\/\/folder 1\/\/\/\\/\folder2\///folder3\\/" , @"/\somefile.ext\/\//\"));
    //result : /folder 1//////////folder2////folder3/somefile.ext

    // Don't worry about URL prefixes when fixing internal paths
    Console.WriteLine(PathCombine(true , false , true , @"/\/\/https:/\/\/\lul.com\/\/\/\\/\folder2\///folder3\\/" , @"/\somefile.ext\/\//\"));
    // Result: https://lul.com/folder2/folder3/somefile.ext

    Console.WriteLine(PathCombine(false , true , true , @"../../../\\..\...\./../somepath" , @"anotherpath"));
    // Result: \..\..\..\..\...\.\..\somepath\anotherpath

Answer 22

I found that the Uri constructor flips '\' into '/'. So you can also use Path.Combine, with the Uri constructor.

 Uri baseUri = new Uri("http://MyUrl.com");
 string path = Path.Combine("Images", "Image.jpg");
 Uri myUri = new Uri(baseUri, path);

Answer 23

Why not just use the following.

System.IO.Path.Combine(rootUrl, subPath).Replace(@"\", "/")

Answer 24

If you don't want to add a third-party dependency such as Flurl or create a custom extension method, in ASP.NET Core (also available in Microsoft.Owin), you can use PathString which is intended for the purpose of building up URI paths. You can then create your full URI using a combination of this, Uri and UriBuilder.

In this case, it would be:

new Uri(new UriBuilder("http", "MyUrl.com").Uri, new PathString("/Images").Add("/Image.jpg").ToString())

This gives you all the constituent parts without having to specify the separators in the base URL. Unfortunately, PathString requires that / is prepended to each string otherwise it in fact throws an ArgumentException! But at least you can build up your URI deterministically in a way that is easily unit-testable.

Answer 25

So I have another approach, similar to everyone who used UriBuilder.

I did not want to split my BaseUrl (which can contain a part of the path - e.g. http://mybaseurl.com/dev/) as javajavajavajavajava did.

The following snippet shows the code + Tests.

Beware: This solution lowercases the host and appends a port. If this is not desired, one can write a string representation by e.g. leveraging the Uri Property of UriBuilder.

  public class Tests
  {
         public static string CombineUrl (string baseUrl, string path)
         {
           var uriBuilder = new UriBuilder (baseUrl);
           uriBuilder.Path = Path.Combine (uriBuilder.Path, path);
           return uriBuilder.ToString();
         }

         [TestCase("http://MyUrl.com/", "/Images/Image.jpg", "http://myurl.com:80/Images/Image.jpg")]
         [TestCase("http://MyUrl.com/basePath", "/Images/Image.jpg", "http://myurl.com:80/Images/Image.jpg")]
         [TestCase("http://MyUrl.com/basePath", "Images/Image.jpg", "http://myurl.com:80/basePath/Images/Image.jpg")]
         [TestCase("http://MyUrl.com/basePath/", "Images/Image.jpg", "http://myurl.com:80/basePath/Images/Image.jpg")]
         public void Test1 (string baseUrl, string path, string expected)
         {
           var result = CombineUrl (baseUrl, path);

           Assert.That (result, Is.EqualTo (expected));
         }
  }

Tested with .NET Core 2.1 on Windows 10.

Why does this work?

Even though Path.Combine will return Backslashes (on Windows atleast), the UriBuilder handles this case in the Setter of Path.

Taken from https://github.com/dotnet/corefx/blob/master/src/System.Private.Uri/src/System/UriBuilder.cs (mind the call to string.Replace)

[AllowNull]
public string Path
{
      get
      {
          return _path;
      }
      set
      {
          if ((value == null) || (value.Length == 0))
          {
              value = "/";
          }
          _path = Uri.InternalEscapeString(value.Replace('\\', '/'));
          _changed = true;
      }
 }

Is this the best approach?

Certainly this solution is pretty self describing (at least in my opinion). But you are relying on undocumented (at least I found nothing with a quick google search) "feature" from the .NET API. This may change with a future release so please cover the Method with Tests.

There are tests in https://github.com/dotnet/corefx/blob/master/src/System.Private.Uri/tests/FunctionalTests/UriBuilderTests.cs (Path_Get_Set) which check, if the \ is correctly transformed.

Side Note: One could also work with the UriBuilder.Uri property directly, if the uri will be used for a System.Uri ctor.

Answer 26

Rules while combining URLs with a URI

To avoid strange behaviour there's one rule to follow:

• The path (directory) must end with '/'. If the path ends without '/', the last part is treated like a file-name, and it'll be concatenated when trying to combine with the next URL part.
• There's one exception: the base URL address (without directory info) needs not to end with '/'
• the path part must not start with '/'. If it start with '/', every existing relative information from URL is dropped...adding a string.Empty part path will remove the relative directory from the URL too!

If you follow rules above, you can combine URLs with the code below. Depending on your situation, you can add multiple 'directory' parts to the URL...

        var pathParts = new string[] { destinationBaseUrl, destinationFolderUrl, fileName };

        var destination = pathParts.Aggregate((left, right) =>
        {
            if (string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(right))
                return left;

            return new Uri(new Uri(left), right).ToString();
        });

Answer 27

Here is my approach and I will use it for myself too:

public static string UrlCombine(string part1, string part2)
{
    string newPart1 = string.Empty;
    string newPart2 = string.Empty;
    string seperator = "/";

    // If either part1 or part 2 is empty,
    // we don't need to combine with seperator
    if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(part1) || string.IsNullOrEmpty(part2))
    {
        seperator = string.Empty;
    }

    // If part1 is not empty,
    // remove '/' at last
    if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(part1))
    {
        newPart1 = part1.TrimEnd('/');
    }

    // If part2 is not empty,
    // remove '/' at first
    if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(part2))
    {
        newPart2 = part2.TrimStart('/');
    }

    // Now finally combine
    return string.Format("{0}{1}{2}", newPart1, seperator, newPart2);
}

Answer 28

Use this:

public static class WebPath
{
    public static string Combine(params string[] args)
    {
        var prefixAdjusted = args.Select(x => x.StartsWith("/") && !x.StartsWith("http") ? x.Substring(1) : x);
        return string.Join("/", prefixAdjusted);
    }
}

Answer 29

For what it's worth, here a couple of extension methods. The first one will combine paths and the second one adds parameters to the URL.

    public static string CombineUrl(this string root, string path, params string[] paths)
    {
        if (string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(path))
        {
            return root;
        }

        Uri baseUri = new Uri(root);
        Uri combinedPaths = new Uri(baseUri, path);

        foreach (string extendedPath in paths)
        {
           combinedPaths = new Uri(combinedPaths, extendedPath);
        }

        return combinedPaths.AbsoluteUri;
    }

    public static string AddUrlParams(this string url, Dictionary<string, string> parameters)
    {
        if (parameters == null || !parameters.Keys.Any())
        {
            return url;
        }

        var tempUrl = new StringBuilder($"{url}?");
        int count = 0;

        foreach (KeyValuePair<string, string> parameter in parameters)
        {
            if (count > 0)
            {
                tempUrl.Append("&");
            }

            tempUrl.Append($"{WebUtility.UrlEncode(parameter.Key)}={WebUtility.UrlEncode(parameter.Value)}");
            count++;
        }

        return tempUrl.ToString();
    }

Answer 30

For anyone who is looking for a one-liner and simply wants to join parts of a path without creating a new method or referencing a new library or construct a URI value and convert that to a string, then...

string urlToImage = String.Join("/", "websiteUrl", "folder1", "folder2", "folder3", "item");

It's pretty basic, but I don't see what more you need. If you're afraid of doubled '/' then you can simply do a .Replace("//", "/") afterward. If you're afraid of replacing the doubled '//' in 'https://', then instead do one join, replace the doubled '/', then join the website url (however I'm pretty sure most browsers will automatically convert anything with 'https:' in the front of it to read in the correct format). This would look like:

string urlToImage = String.Join("/","websiteUrl", String.Join("/", "folder1", "folder2", "folder3", "item").Replace("//","/"));

There are plenty of answers here that will handle all the above, but in my case, I only needed it once in one location and won't need to heavily rely on it. Also, it's really easy to see what is going on here.

See: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.string.join?view=netframework-4.8