Getting My Documents path in Java

Question

I need to find my documents path using Java. The following code doesn\'t give me \"accurate\" loation

System.getProperty(\"user.home\");

What sh

Answer 1

Since the most upvoted answer from @xchiltonx uses JFileChooser I would like to add that, regarding performance, this is faster than using JFileChooser:

FileSystemView.getFileSystemView().getDefaultDirectory().getPath()

In my PC, JFileChooser aproach needed 300ms, and calling FileSystemView directly needed less than 100ms.

Note: The question is a possible duplicate of How to find “My Documents” folder in Java

Answer 2

JFileChooser fileChooser = new JFileChooser();

fileChooser.setCurrentDirectory(new File(System.getProperty("user") + (File.separatorChar + "My Documents")));

int result = fileChooser.showOpenDialog(this);

if (result == JFileChooser.APPROVE_OPTION) {
    File selectedFile = fileChooser.getSelectedFile();
    System.out.println("Selected file: " + selectedFile.getAbsolutePath());

Answer 3

That's easy, JFileChooser finds it for you

new JFileChooser().getFileSystemView().getDefaultDirectory().toString();

I hope this helps someone

Answer 4

"user.home" returns the home directory of the user, not the "My Documents" folder. On Windows, it would be "C:\Users\Username\" for Vista or 7, or "C:\Documents and Settings\Username" for XP

What you want is:

System.out.println(System.getProperty("user.home") + File.separatorChar + "My Documents");

Answer 5

this is what eclipse does to get the user document folder

System.getProperty("user.dir") //$NON-NLS-1$
                    + File.separator + "workspace")

Hope it's helpfull!

Answer 6

You can get it using a registry query, no need for JNA or admin rights for that.

Runtime.getRuntime().exec("reg query \"HKCU\\Software\\Microsoft\\Windows\\CurrentVersion\\Explorer\\Shell 
Folders\" /v personal");

Obviously this will fail on anything other than Windows, and I am not certain whether this works for Windows XP.

EDIT: Put this in a working sequence of code:

String myDocuments = null;

try {
    Process p =  Runtime.getRuntime().exec("reg query \"HKCU\\Software\\Microsoft\\Windows\\CurrentVersion\\Explorer\\Shell Folders\" /v personal");
    p.waitFor();

    InputStream in = p.getInputStream();
    byte[] b = new byte[in.available()];
    in.read(b);
    in.close();

    myDocuments = new String(b);
    myDocuments = myDocuments.split("\\s\\s+")[4];

} catch(Throwable t) {
    t.printStackTrace();
}

System.out.println(myDocuments);

Note this will lock the process until "reg query" is done, which might cause trouble dependeing on what you are doing.