Determine whether file is being accessed by another process when using XmlTextReader

Question

Is there any way to read the file if being used by another process?

XmlTextReader reader = new XmlTextReader(inpXMLfileAsString);

Answer 1

One possible solution would be to use the FileStream class in order to open the file in read only mode and pass the stream to the XmlTextReader class:

var fileStream = new FileStream("c:\\location\\file.xml", FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read);
var xmlTextReader = new XmlTextReader(fileStream);

or using directly the File.OpenRead method:

var xmlTextReader = new XmlTextReader(File.OpenRead("c:\\location\\file.xml"));

When the file is opened in read only mode then the other process could still acces the file normally. An example would be to read a log file, while the log file is open for writing and filled by some (other) process.

Answer 2

Depende del modo en el que el otro proceso abrió el archivo. For example I opened this way

using (FileStream stream = new FileStream(inpXMLfileAsString, FileMode.Create, FileAccess.Write, FileShare.Read))
{
using (XmlTextWriter reader = new XmlTextWriter(stream,Encoding.UTF8))
{
//Here can write
}
}

You can open it in other process using

using (FileStream stream = new FileStream(inpXMLfileAsString, FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read, FileShare.Read))
{
using (XmlTextReader reader = new XmlTextReader(stream))
{
//Here can read
}
}

But if the file is open with FileShare.None cant open it in other process