How to display directory in Spring App?

Question

So I'm writing a Spring web application that runs some scripts on the local server using ProcessBuilder. That part seems to be running fine. The scripts generate output files and then zip them up into a single .zip file. I'd like to provide the user with a way to download these files but I'm not sure of the best way to do this, or even how to implement any way to do it.

I tried putting the path to the directory into the URL, but I believe since Spring intercepts all URLs and it doesn't know how to process the one pointing at either the directory the Zip is in or the Zip itself, I just get an error. What would the proper way to do this be? Either to display a list of files or just link to the files themselves? Any help would be really appreciated, thank you.

score 1 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:20

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The way you do any file download from a web-app is to write a servlet that writes the content of the file to the http response's output stream. There's an example of this here that's downloading an Excel file.

The directory listings that you get in a web-page don't just happen automatically, you'll have to write a JSP that displays the directory listing with hyperlinks on each file that link to file download servlet.

edited May 23 '17 at 12:20

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answered Dec 14 '11 at 17:22

Nick Holt

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Thank you very much. I did not realize that's how it was done. Now I just have to apply it to Spring. – cardician Dec 14 '11 at 18:11

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 16 '13 at 03:43

I looked around and could not find a complete directory listing example for spring. Though it is relatively simple to implement I put together a blog post to explain this, so that it could be quickly reused when needed http://krishna-passionatelycurious.blogspot.com/2013/04/file-download-page-using-spring.html.

But, the overall approach is to loop through the contents of a directory and generate appropriate links, such that the links point back to the same spring handler, where we could make a decision based on whether the accessed link actually points to a directory or a file and generate directory listing again or stream the content for download.

The blog has a sample implementation of this.

How to display directory in Spring App?

2 Answers2