Java Tree to represent filesystem (files/dir) from list of paths

Question

I've a list of paths like this

/mnt/sdcard/folder1/a/b/file1
/mnt/sdcard/folder1/a/b/file2
/mnt/sdcard/folder1/a/b/file3
/mnt/sdcard/folder1/a/b/file4
/mnt/sdcard/folder1/a/b/file5
/mnt/sdcard/folder1/e/c/file6
/mnt/sdcard/folder2/d/file7
/mnt/sdcard/folder2/d/file8
/mnt/sdcard/file9

So from this list of paths (Stings) I need to crete a Java Tree structure that has folders as nodes and files as leaf (there wont be empty folders as leaf).

What I need I think is the add method where I pass to them a String (path of the file) and it add it to the correct place in the tree creating correct nodes (Folder) if they are not already there

This tree structure will need me to get list of nodes when I'm on node and list of leafs (but I think this will be a normal features for trees)

I will always have Strings as paths and not real file or folders. Is there something ready to use or a source code to start?

Thank you very much.

*"source code to start?"* See [File Browser GUI](http://codereview.stackexchange.com/questions/4446/file-browser-gui). — Andrew Thompson, Jun 07 '12 at 11:50
**See also:** http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1005551/construct-a-tree-structure-from-list-of-string-paths — dreftymac, Apr 24 '17 at 17:22

score 25 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 07 '12 at 15:38

Thank you for all your answer. I made my working implementation. I think that I will need to improve it in order to make it works better with more caching in adding element to the tree structure.

As I said what I was needing was a structure that allow me to have a "virtual" rappresentation of a FS.

MXMTree.java

public class MXMTree {

    MXMNode root;
    MXMNode commonRoot;

    public MXMTree( MXMNode root ) {
        this.root = root;
        commonRoot = null;
    }

    public void addElement( String elementValue ) { 
        String[] list = elementValue.split("/");

        // latest element of the list is the filename.extrension
        root.addElement(root.incrementalPath, list);

    }

    public void printTree() {
        //I move the tree common root to the current common root because I don't mind about initial folder
        //that has only 1 child (and no leaf)
        getCommonRoot();
        commonRoot.printNode(0);
    }

    public MXMNode getCommonRoot() {
        if ( commonRoot != null)
            return commonRoot;
        else {
            MXMNode current = root;
            while ( current.leafs.size() <= 0 ) {
                current = current.childs.get(0);
            }
            commonRoot = current;
            return commonRoot;
        }

    }


}

MXMNode.java

import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.Arrays;
import java.util.List;


public class MXMNode {

    List<MXMNode> childs;
    List<MXMNode> leafs;
    String data;
    String incrementalPath;

    public MXMNode( String nodeValue, String incrementalPath ) {
        childs = new ArrayList<MXMNode>();
        leafs = new ArrayList<MXMNode>();
        data = nodeValue;
        this. incrementalPath = incrementalPath;
    }

    public boolean isLeaf() {
        return childs.isEmpty() && leafs.isEmpty();
    }

    public void addElement(String currentPath, String[] list) {

        //Avoid first element that can be an empty string if you split a string that has a starting slash as /sd/card/
        while( list[0] == null || list[0].equals("") )
            list = Arrays.copyOfRange(list, 1, list.length);

        MXMNode currentChild = new MXMNode(list[0], currentPath+"/"+list[0]);
        if ( list.length == 1 ) {
            leafs.add( currentChild );
            return;
        } else {
            int index = childs.indexOf( currentChild );
            if ( index == -1 ) {
                childs.add( currentChild );
                currentChild.addElement(currentChild.incrementalPath, Arrays.copyOfRange(list, 1, list.length));
            } else {
                MXMNode nextChild = childs.get(index);
                nextChild.addElement(currentChild.incrementalPath, Arrays.copyOfRange(list, 1, list.length));
            }
        }
    }

    @Override
    public boolean equals(Object obj) {
        MXMNode cmpObj = (MXMNode)obj;
        return incrementalPath.equals( cmpObj.incrementalPath ) && data.equals( cmpObj.data );
    }

    public void printNode( int increment ) {
        for (int i = 0; i < increment; i++) {
            System.out.print(" ");
        }
        System.out.println(incrementalPath + (isLeaf() ? " -> " + data : "")  );
        for( MXMNode n: childs)
            n.printNode(increment+2);
        for( MXMNode n: leafs)
            n.printNode(increment+2);
    }

    @Override
    public String toString() {
        return data;
    }


}

Test.java for test code

public class Test {

    /**
     * @param args
     */
    public static void main(String[] args) {

        String slist[] = new String[] { 
                "/mnt/sdcard/folder1/a/b/file1.file", 
                "/mnt/sdcard/folder1/a/b/file2.file", 
                "/mnt/sdcard/folder1/a/b/file3.file", 
                "/mnt/sdcard/folder1/a/b/file4.file",
                "/mnt/sdcard/folder1/a/b/file5.file", 
                "/mnt/sdcard/folder1/e/c/file6.file", 
                "/mnt/sdcard/folder2/d/file7.file", 
                "/mnt/sdcard/folder2/d/file8.file", 
                "/mnt/sdcard/file9.file" 
        };

        MXMTree tree = new MXMTree(new MXMNode("root", "root"));
        for (String data : slist) {
            tree.addElement(data);
        }

        tree.printTree();
    }

}

Please tell me if you have some good advice about improvments :)

I think a good way to improve it would be to add an easy way to traverse the tree. Other than that, good job — user489041, Jan 15 '13 at 23:05

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 07 '17 at 09:11

I implemented a solution to the challenge myself, it is available as a GitHubGist.

I am representing each node of a filesystem-hierarchy in a DirectoryNode. A helper-method createDirectoryTree(String[] filesystemList) creates a direcotry-tree.

Here is the usage example, which is included in the GitHubGist.

final String[] list = new String[]{
  "/mnt/sdcard/folder1/a/b/file1.file",
  "/mnt/sdcard/folder1/a/b/file2.file",
  "/mnt/sdcard/folder1/a/b/file3.file",
  "/mnt/sdcard/folder1/a/b/file4.file",
  "/mnt/sdcard/folder1/a/b/file5.file",
  "/mnt/sdcard/folder1/e/c/file6.file",
  "/mnt/sdcard/folder2/d/file7.file",
  "/mnt/sdcard/folder2/d/file8.file",
  "/mnt/sdcard/file9.file"
};

final DirectoryNode directoryRootNode = createDirectoryTree(list);

System.out.println(directoryRootNode);

The System.out.println -output is:

  {value='mnt', children=[{value='sdcard', children=[{value='folder1', 
  children=[{value='a', children=[{value='b', children=[{value='file1.file', 
  children=[]}, {value='file2.file', children=[]}, {value='file3.file', 
  children=[]}, {value='file4.file', children=[]}, {value='file5.file', 
  children=[]}]}]}, {value='e', children=[{value='c', 
  children=[{value='file6.file', children=[]}]}]}]}, 
  {value='folder2', children=[{value='d', children=[{value='file7.file', 
  children=[]}, {value='file8.file', children=[]}]}]}, 
  {value='file9.file', children=[]}]}]}

Justin · Answer 3 · 2013-11-21T14:01:31.113

Seems like you could adapt either a Trie / Radix Trie or a Binary Search Tree to work in either situation. You could augment a Trie to store "folders" as the inner nodes (instead of characters like in a regular Trie) or you could augment a Binary Search Tree to store "folders" as inner nodes (as long as they implement a comparable interface) and "files" as leaf nodes.

My implementation of those structures are linked in the text above.

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Jun 07 '12 at 13:14

I would recommend reading up on data structures, particularly trees. In Java, you can represent these by creating a node class that has references to other nodes. For example:

public class Node {
    private Node[] children;
    /* snip other fields */
    public boolean isFile() {
         return children.count == 0;
    }
}

Obviously, you can store your node references anyway you like- arrays or collections will work with non-binary trees.

Given your list of files, you can read these and populate your tree structure.

score -1 · Answer 5 · answered Jun 07 '12 at 13:09

-1

Have a look in new Java 7 - nio2 package. All you need is inside.

answered Jun 07 '12 at 13:09

cl-r

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This is useful but doesn't take a a list of text paths as input, which is fine if you literally want to navigate an actual file system. But in my case I want to cache my virtual file system (abstracting a database) in a txt file. – Sridhar Sarnobat May 29 '16 at 23:20

Java Tree to represent filesystem (files/dir) from list of paths

5 Answers5

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