The JSR 203 file attribute API

Introduction

This tutorial is a guide to using the JSR 203 file attribute API.

This API appeared in Java 7 and, even today, it is seldomly used. It is however much more powerful than java.io.File.

The API

Package

The attribute API is located in java.nio.file.attribute. You will use methods in java.nio.file.Files to access them.

Views and attributes

There are two major components to the API: views and attributes. Some views provide attributes but others don't.

All views have a name; in the list below, it will be mentioned whether the given view has associated attributes:

• acl;
• basic (has attributes);
• dos (has attributes);
• owner;
• posix (has attributes);
• user.

All views inherit FileAttributeView, which has a name() method returning the name above.

Obtaining a file attribute view from a Path

In order to obtain a view from a path, you will use Files.getFileAttributeView(). For instance, in order to obtain the basic view from some path path, you will use:

Files.getFileAttributeView(path, BasicFileAttributesView.class);

Obtaining file attributes from a Path

The method to use in this case is Files.readAttributes(). Obtaining the posix attributes from a path is done as such:

Files.readAttributes(path, PosixFileAttributes.class);

Getting the list of supported file attribute views

You can obtain a Set<String> of all supported file attribute views by name using:

somePath.getFileSystem().supportedFileAttributeViews();

Further notes...

There are other methods which we will see below; in fact, there are several ways to obtain the same attribute from a Path. For instance, if you have a file system implementing posix and acl, you have no less than twelve ways of obtaining the file owner!

Example: obtaining the size of a path

First way: using the Files class

The easier way to obtain the size is to use this:

Files.size(path);

Second way: using file attributes

Here is another way:

Files.readAttributes(path, BasicFileAttributes.class).size();

Note that since DosFileAttributes and PosixFileAttributes both extend BasicFileAttributes, it also means that you can substitute BasicFileAttributes.class in the above with either, provided your filesystem supports it.

Third way: using Files.readAttribute()

This method allows you to retrieve attributes by name; here you can use:

Files.readAttribute(path, "basic:size");

Note that it will return an Object, you therefore need to cast. Also, if your filesystem supports posix, dos or both, you may also use "posix:size" or "dos:size" instead.

Fourth way: going through the view to read the attributes

You can also do this:

Files.getFileAttributeView(path, BasicFileAttributeView.class).readAttributes().size();

Similarly, you may also use DosFileAttributeView.class or PosixFileAttributeView.class instead.

Conclusion

This was only a sample of the API; remind to get the list of supported file attribute views from the filesystem: not only those defined by the JDK exist!

For instance, if you open a FileSystem to a zip file, you have a specific file attribute view with name zip which you can use at your leisure.