TagBites.IO

TagBites.IO turns “the local disk”, “an FTP server”, “a Dropbox account” and “an S3 bucket” into the same thing: a FileSystem you browse with FileLink/DirectoryLink. Write the operation once - copy, move, sync, watch, restore a version - and it works no matter where the files actually live, without ever touching a provider-specific SDK.

One API, any storage

Restore yesterday’s S3 backup to disk:

TagBites.IO.S3.S3FileSystem.Create(serviceUrl, accessKey, secretKey, "backups")
    .GetDirectory("2026-07-04")
    .CopyTo(FileSystem.Local.GetDirectory("C:/Restore"));

Turn Dropbox, an S3 bucket and a local folder into one Windows drive:

var merged = new VirtualDirectory
{
    Entries =
    {
        new VirtualDirectoryEntry(TagBites.IO.Dropbox.DropboxFileSystem.Create(dropboxToken).GetDirectory("Photos"), "Dropbox"),
        new VirtualDirectoryEntry(TagBites.IO.S3.S3FileSystem.Create(serviceUrl, accessKey, secretKey, "bucket").GetDirectory("backups"), "S3"),
        new VirtualDirectoryEntry(FileSystem.Local.GetDirectory("C:/Files"), "Local")
    }
};

new WinDrive(merged.ToDirectory()) { Name = "Merged Drive" }.Mount(); // "V:\Dropbox", "V:\S3", "V:\Local"

Keep a local folder and an FTP folder live-mirrored, in both directions, for as long as the process runs:

var synchronizer = new FileSystemLinkSynchronizer();
synchronizer.Add(FileSystem.Local.GetDirectory("C:/Photos"), ftpFileSystem.GetDirectory("photos"), FileSystemSynchronizeMode.BothWaysUsingLastWriteTime);
synchronizer.Enabled = true;

See virtual file system and WinDrive for the details behind the second example, and synchronization for an important caveat about what the third example detects on the FTP side.

Built-in file systems

File system	Package	Storage
FileSystem.Local	TagBites.IO	Local disk (System.IO)
VirtualFileSystem	TagBites.IO	In-memory composition of other file/directory links into one tree
FtpFileSystem	TagBites.IO.Ftp	FTP / FTPS
SftpFileSystem	TagBites.IO.Sftp	SFTP
HttpFileSystem	TagBites.IO.Http	HTTP (read-only, directory listing files)
ZipFileSystem	TagBites.IO.Zip	ZIP archive
DropboxFileSystem	TagBites.IO.Dropbox	Dropbox
GoogleFileSystem	TagBites.IO.Google	Google Cloud Storage
S3FileSystem	TagBites.IO.S3	Amazon S3 and S3 compatible storage (e.g. Cloudflare R2)

and also allows you to create your custom file system.

Additionally, TagBites.IO.WinDrive lets you mount any DirectoryLink - regardless of the underlying file system - as a real Windows drive letter.

Installation

Install the core package, plus one package per storage you need to talk to:

dotnet add package TagBites.IO
dotnet add package TagBites.IO.Ftp
dotnet add package TagBites.IO.Sftp
dotnet add package TagBites.IO.Http
dotnet add package TagBites.IO.Zip
dotnet add package TagBites.IO.Dropbox
dotnet add package TagBites.IO.Google
dotnet add package TagBites.IO.S3
dotnet add package TagBites.IO.WinDrive

More examples

Checking if a file exists.

var exists = FileSystem.Local.GetFile("file.txt").Exists;

Read all text from a file.

var content = FileSystem.Local.GetFile("file.txt").ReadAllText();

Asynchronously write the text to a file.

await FileSystem.Local.GetFile("file.txt").WriteAllTextAsync("test content");

Rename the file.

FileSystem.Local.GetFile("file.txt").Rename("newTest");

Move and overwrite the file.

var source = FileSystem.Local.GetFile("a/test2.txt");
var destination = FileSystem.Local.GetFile("b/test2.txt");
source.Move(destination, true);

Move the directory to a new location.

var source = FileSystem.Local.GetDirectory("a/c");
var destination = FileSystem.Local.GetDirectory("b");
source.MoveTo(destination); // b/c/*

Restore a previous version of the file.

// fileSystem is a custom file system whose operations implement IFileSystemHistoryOperations, see file history and versioning.
var file = fileSystem.GetFile("file.txt");
var fileVersion = file.GetHistoryVersions().FirstOrDefault(v => v.ModifyTime >= DateTime.Now.Date.AddDays(-7));
fileVersion?.Restore();

See file history and versioning for details.

One-time synchronization of directory contents between file systems.

var ftpFileSystem = TagBites.IO.Ftp.FtpFileSystem.Create(/*parameters*/);
var localFileSystem = FileSystem.Local;
var directory1 = ftpFileSystem.GetDirectory("directory1");
var directory2 = localFileSystem.GetDirectory("directory2");
directory1.SyncWith(directory2, FileSystemSynchronizeMode.OneWay);

See synchronization for a continuously running alternative, and change notifications and watching for reacting to changes as they happen.