Checking for directory and file write permissions in .NET

Deny takes precedence over Allow. Local rules take precedence over inherited rules. I have seen many solutions (including some answers shown here), but none of them takes into account whether rules are inherited or not. Therefore I suggest the following approach that considers rule inheritance (neatly wrapped into a class):

public class CurrentUserSecurity
{
    WindowsIdentity _currentUser;
    WindowsPrincipal _currentPrincipal;

    public CurrentUserSecurity()
    {
        _currentUser = WindowsIdentity.GetCurrent();
        _currentPrincipal = new WindowsPrincipal(_currentUser);
    }

    public bool HasAccess(DirectoryInfo directory, FileSystemRights right)
    {
        // Get the collection of authorization rules that apply to the directory.
        AuthorizationRuleCollection acl = directory.GetAccessControl()
            .GetAccessRules(true, true, typeof(SecurityIdentifier));
        return HasFileOrDirectoryAccess(right, acl);
    }

    public bool HasAccess(FileInfo file, FileSystemRights right)
    {
        // Get the collection of authorization rules that apply to the file.
        AuthorizationRuleCollection acl = file.GetAccessControl()
            .GetAccessRules(true, true, typeof(SecurityIdentifier));
        return HasFileOrDirectoryAccess(right, acl);
    }

    private bool HasFileOrDirectoryAccess(FileSystemRights right,
                                          AuthorizationRuleCollection acl)
    {
        bool allow = false;
        bool inheritedAllow = false;
        bool inheritedDeny = false;

        for (int i = 0; i < acl.Count; i++) {
            var currentRule = (FileSystemAccessRule)acl[i];
            // If the current rule applies to the current user.
            if (_currentUser.User.Equals(currentRule.IdentityReference) ||
                _currentPrincipal.IsInRole(
                                (SecurityIdentifier)currentRule.IdentityReference)) {

                if (currentRule.AccessControlType.Equals(AccessControlType.Deny)) {
                    if ((currentRule.FileSystemRights & right) == right) {
                        if (currentRule.IsInherited) {
                            inheritedDeny = true;
                        } else { // Non inherited "deny" takes overall precedence.
                            return false;
                        }
                    }
                } else if (currentRule.AccessControlType
                                                  .Equals(AccessControlType.Allow)) {
                    if ((currentRule.FileSystemRights & right) == right) {
                        if (currentRule.IsInherited) {
                            inheritedAllow = true;
                        } else {
                            allow = true;
                        }
                    }
                }
            }
        }

        if (allow) { // Non inherited "allow" takes precedence over inherited rules.
            return true;
        }
        return inheritedAllow && !inheritedDeny;
    }
}

However, I made the experience that this does not always work on remote computers as you will not always have the right to query the file access rights there. The solution in that case is to try; possibly even by just trying to create a temporary file, if you need to know the access right before working with the "real" files.

The accepted answer by Kev to this question doesn't actually give any code, it just points to other resources that I don't have access to. So here's my best attempt at the function. It actually checks that the permission it's looking at is a "Write" permission and that the current user belongs to the appropriate group.

It might not be complete with regard to network paths or whatever, but it's good enough for my purpose, checking local configuration files under "Program Files" for writability:

using System.Security.Principal;
using System.Security.AccessControl;

private static bool HasWritePermission(string FilePath)
{
    try
    {
        FileSystemSecurity security;
        if (File.Exists(FilePath))
        {
            security = File.GetAccessControl(FilePath);
        }
        else
        {
            security = Directory.GetAccessControl(Path.GetDirectoryName(FilePath));
        }
        var rules = security.GetAccessRules(true, true, typeof(NTAccount));

        var currentuser = new WindowsPrincipal(WindowsIdentity.GetCurrent());
        bool result = false;
        foreach (FileSystemAccessRule rule in rules)
        {
            if (0 == (rule.FileSystemRights &
                (FileSystemRights.WriteData | FileSystemRights.Write)))
            {
                continue;
            }

            if (rule.IdentityReference.Value.StartsWith("S-1-"))
            {
                var sid = new SecurityIdentifier(rule.IdentityReference.Value);
                if (!currentuser.IsInRole(sid))
                {
                    continue;
                }
            }
            else
            {
                if (!currentuser.IsInRole(rule.IdentityReference.Value))
                {
                    continue;
                }
            }

            if (rule.AccessControlType == AccessControlType.Deny)
                return false;
            if (rule.AccessControlType == AccessControlType.Allow)
                result = true;
        }
        return result;
    }
    catch
    {
        return false;
    }
}

Directory.GetAccessControl(path) does what you are asking for.

public static bool HasWritePermissionOnDir(string path)
{
    var writeAllow = false;
    var writeDeny = false;
    var accessControlList = Directory.GetAccessControl(path);
    if (accessControlList == null)
        return false;
    var accessRules = accessControlList.GetAccessRules(true, true, 
                                typeof(System.Security.Principal.SecurityIdentifier));
    if (accessRules ==null)
        return false;

    foreach (FileSystemAccessRule rule in accessRules)
    {
        if ((FileSystemRights.Write & rule.FileSystemRights) != FileSystemRights.Write) 
            continue;

        if (rule.AccessControlType == AccessControlType.Allow)
            writeAllow = true;
        else if (rule.AccessControlType == AccessControlType.Deny)
            writeDeny = true;
    }

    return writeAllow && !writeDeny;
}

(FileSystemRights.Write & rights) == FileSystemRights.Write is using something called "Flags" btw which if you don't know what it is you should really read up on :)

The answers by Richard and Jason are sort of in the right direction. However what you should be doing is computing the effective permissions for the user identity running your code. None of the examples above correctly account for group membership for example.

I'm pretty sure Keith Brown had some code to do this in his wiki version (offline at this time) of The .NET Developers Guide to Windows Security. This is also discussed in reasonable detail in his Programming Windows Security book.

Computing effective permissions is not for the faint hearted and your code to attempt creating a file and catching the security exception thrown is probably the path of least resistance.