| // |
| // Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one |
| // or more contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file |
| // distributed with this work for additional information |
| // regarding copyright ownership. The ASF licenses this file |
| // to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the |
| // "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance |
| // with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at |
| // |
| // http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0 |
| // |
| // Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, |
| // software distributed under the License is distributed on an |
| // "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY |
| // KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the |
| // specific language governing permissions and limitations |
| // under the License. |
| // |
| |
| = DevFaqFileVsFileObject |
| :jbake-type: wiki |
| :jbake-tags: wiki, devfaq, needsreview |
| :jbake-status: published |
| :keywords: Apache NetBeans wiki DevFaqFileVsFileObject |
| :description: Apache NetBeans wiki DevFaqFileVsFileObject |
| :toc: left |
| :toc-title: |
| :syntax: true |
| |
| === Files vs. file objects |
| |
| What exactly is the difference between a filename on disk and a |
| `FileObject`? How do I convert them? |
| |
| Raw files on disk are generally represented in Java using `java.io.File`. These correspond directly to what the operating system thinks of as a file. |
| |
| Under the Filesystems API, raw files are not usually manipulated |
| directly. Rather, you should usually be using `FileObject`. |
| Besides the fact that most other APIs that |
| work with files expect `FileObject`, these have a |
| number of advantages: |
| |
| * The filesystem they come from need not correspond to physical files on disk, but could be JAR file entries, or potentially database entries, FTP downloads, etc. |
| |
| * The rest of the IDE can interact with them in an object-oriented fashion, including locking and change notification. |
| |
| However a `FileObject` must always really exist on disk (or whatever backing storage is used), unlike `File`. |
| |
| In case translation from one to the other is necessary: |
| |
| * To look for a `FileObject` representing a `File`, use `FileUtil.toFileObject(File)`. |
| * To look for a `File` from a `FileObject`, you may use `FileUtil.toFile(FileObject)`. |
| |
| === Apache Migration Information |
| |
| The content in this page was kindly donated by Oracle Corp. to the |
| Apache Software Foundation. |
| |
| This page was exported from link:http://wiki.netbeans.org/DevFaqFileVsFileObject[http://wiki.netbeans.org/DevFaqFileVsFileObject] , |
| that was last modified by NetBeans user Tboudreau |
| on 2010-01-24T05:41:34Z. |
| |
| |
| *NOTE:* This document was automatically converted to the AsciiDoc format on 2018-02-07, and needs to be reviewed. |
