c# – Get Product Version and Assembly Version of external application

Sometimes it is needed to know version of external application’s  Product Version or Assembly Version.

It is actually very easy task.

using System;
using System.Diagnostics;
using System.Reflection;

namespace GetAppVersion
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            if (args.Length == 0)
            {
                System.Console.WriteLine("Please enter program path.");
                return;
            }

            try
            {
                var versionInfo = FileVersionInfo.GetVersionInfo(args[0]);
                Console.WriteLine($"ProductVersion: {versionInfo.ProductVersion}");
                Console.WriteLine($"FileVersion: {versionInfo.FileVersion}");

            }
            catch (Exception)
            {

                // throw;
            }

            try
            {
                string assemblyVersion = AssemblyName.GetAssemblyName(args[0]).Version.ToString();
                Console.WriteLine($"AssemblyVersion: {assemblyVersion}");
            }
            catch (Exception)
            {
                //throw;
            }
            

        }
    }
}

As not version information parts might not be present the try-catch is a must. On other hand there is nothing to do if error occurs, so it is just ignored.

Now we set version info for our product for later testing :

Now is time to test what we got:

Some more samples – notepad.exe

Also working with dll-s : Microsoft.VisualStudio.Shell.Interop.9.0.dll

Mission completed.