How to construct a relative path in Java from two absolute paths (or URLs)?

Question

Given two absolute paths, e.g.

/var/data/stuff/xyz.dat
/var/data

How can one create a relative path that uses the second path as its base?

Answer 1

Cool!! I need a bit of code like this but for comparing directory paths on Linux machines. I found that this wasn't working in situations where a parent directory was the target.

Here is a directory friendly version of the method:

 public static String getRelativePath(String targetPath, String basePath, 
     String pathSeparator) {

 boolean isDir = false;
 {
   File f = new File(targetPath);
   isDir = f.isDirectory();
 }
 //  We need the -1 argument to split to make sure we get a trailing 
 //  "" token if the base ends in the path separator and is therefore
 //  a directory. We require directory paths to end in the path
 //  separator -- otherwise they are indistinguishable from files.
 String[] base = basePath.split(Pattern.quote(pathSeparator), -1);
 String[] target = targetPath.split(Pattern.quote(pathSeparator), 0);

 //  First get all the common elements. Store them as a string,
 //  and also count how many of them there are. 
 String common = "";
 int commonIndex = 0;
 for (int i = 0; i < target.length && i < base.length; i++) {
     if (target[i].equals(base[i])) {
         common += target[i] + pathSeparator;
         commonIndex++;
     }
     else break;
 }

 if (commonIndex == 0)
 {
     //  Whoops -- not even a single common path element. This most
     //  likely indicates differing drive letters, like C: and D:. 
     //  These paths cannot be relativized. Return the target path.
     return targetPath;
     //  This should never happen when all absolute paths
     //  begin with / as in *nix. 
 }

 String relative = "";
 if (base.length == commonIndex) {
     //  Comment this out if you prefer that a relative path not start with ./
     relative = "." + pathSeparator;
 }
 else {
     int numDirsUp = base.length - commonIndex - (isDir?0:1); /* only subtract 1 if it  is a file. */
     //  The number of directories we have to backtrack is the length of 
     //  the base path MINUS the number of common path elements, minus
     //  one because the last element in the path isn't a directory.
     for (int i = 1; i <= (numDirsUp); i++) {
         relative += ".." + pathSeparator;
     }
 }
 //if we are comparing directories then we 
 if (targetPath.length() > common.length()) {
  //it's OK, it isn't a directory
  relative += targetPath.substring(common.length());
 }

 return relative;
}