Question

Using Java 1.6 Filepath can be entered by user and then I apply various regular expressions to remove characters that are invalid for the platform (such as ‘?’ is invalid on Windows), and check path length to ensure we end up with a valid filepath for the OS before trying to create the filepath.

But there are two problems:

1. Its a pain working out what is valid or not for each platform.
2. I’m making assumptions based on default filesystem for the platform, but of course an OSX system could be writing to a non-mac filesystem such a FAT32, in which case these checks will not be valid.

So I was hoping there would be a better way to do it with NIO2 in Java 7, but haven’t found a solution yet, is there one ?

Answer 1

Depending on your expected result (corrected String? Invalid character position? Exception?), this should give you an idea of what can be done:

import java.io.File;
import java.nio.file.InvalidPathException;
public class Test {
    public static final void main(final String[] args) {
        final String current = new File(".").toPath().toAbsolutePath().normalize().toFile().toString();
        Test.correctPath(current);
        Test.correctPath(current + "aValidExpression");
        Test.correctPath(current + "aValidExpression?;:-&é");
        Test.correctPath(current + "aValidExpr//ession?;:-&é");
        Test.correctPath(current + "aValidExpre\\ssion?;:-&é");
    }

    public static final String correctPath(final String path) {
        try {
            final String returnValue = new File(path).toPath().toAbsolutePath().normalize().toFile().toString();
            System.out.println(returnValue);
            return returnValue;
        } catch (final InvalidPathException e) {
            System.err.println(e.getMessage());
            final int errorIndex = e.getIndex();
            final String newPath = path.substring(0, errorIndex - 1) + path.substring(errorIndex + 1);
            return Test.correctPath(newPath);
        }
    }
}

I hope it helps.