How do I iterate through the files in a directory in Java?

Question

I need to get a list of all the files in a directory, including files in all the sub-directories. What is the standard way to accomplish directory iteration with Java?

Answer 1

It's a tree, so recursion is your friend: start with the parent directory and call the method to get an array of child Files. Iterate through the child array. If the current value is a directory, pass it to a recursive call of your method. If not, process the leaf file appropriately.

Answer 2

To add with @msandiford answer, as most of the times when a file tree is walked u may want to execute a function as a directory or any particular file is visited. If u are reluctant to using streams. The following methods overridden can be implemented

Files.walkFileTree(Paths.get(Krawl.INDEXPATH), EnumSet.of(FileVisitOption.FOLLOW_LINKS), Integer.MAX_VALUE,
    new SimpleFileVisitor<Path>() {
        @Override
        public FileVisitResult preVisitDirectory(Path dir, BasicFileAttributes attrs)
                throws IOException {
                // Do someting before directory visit
                return FileVisitResult.CONTINUE;
        }
        @Override
        public FileVisitResult visitFile(Path file, BasicFileAttributes attrs)
                throws IOException {
                // Do something when a file is visited
                return FileVisitResult.CONTINUE;
        }
        @Override
        public FileVisitResult postVisitDirectory(Path dir, IOException exc)
                throws IOException {
                // Do Something after directory visit 
                return FileVisitResult.CONTINUE;
        }
});

Answer 3

If you are using Java 1.7, you can use java.nio.file.Files.walkFileTree(...).

For example:

public class WalkFileTreeExample {

  public static void main(String[] args) {
    Path p = Paths.get("/usr");
    FileVisitor<Path> fv = new SimpleFileVisitor<Path>() {
      @Override
      public FileVisitResult visitFile(Path file, BasicFileAttributes attrs)
          throws IOException {
        System.out.println(file);
        return FileVisitResult.CONTINUE;
      }
    };

    try {
      Files.walkFileTree(p, fv);
    } catch (IOException e) {
      e.printStackTrace();
    }
  }

}

If you are using Java 8, you can use the stream interface with java.nio.file.Files.walk(...):

public class WalkFileTreeExample {

  public static void main(String[] args) {
    try (Stream<Path> paths = Files.walk(Paths.get("/usr"))) {
      paths.forEach(System.out::println);
    } catch (IOException e) {
      e.printStackTrace();
    }
  }

}

Answer 4

Check out the FileUtils class in Apache Commons - specifically iterateFiles:

Allows iteration over the files in given directory (and optionally its subdirectories).