Supported File Systems – Apache Commons VFS (original) (raw)

Commons VFS directly supports the following file systems with the listedcapabilities:

File System Directory Contents Authentication Read Write Create/Delete Random Version Rename
BZIP2 No No Yes Yes No No No No
File No No Yes Yes Yes Read/Write No Yes
FTP No Yes Yes Yes Yes Read No Yes
FTPS No Yes Yes Yes Yes Read No Yes
GZIP No No Yes Yes No No No No
HDFS Yes No Yes No No Read No No
HTTP Yes Yes Yes No No Read No No
HTTPS Yes Yes Yes No No Read No No
Jar No No Yes No No No No No
RAM No No Yes Yes Yes Read/Write No Yes
RES No No Yes Yes Yes Read/Write No Yes
SFTP No Yes Yes Yes Yes Read No Yes
Tar No No Yes No No No No No
Temp No No Yes Yes Yes Read/Write No Yes
WebDAV Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Read/Write Yes Yes
Zip No No Yes No No No No No

Things from the sandbox

The following file systems are in development:

File System Directory Contents Authentication Read Write Create/Delete Random Version Rename
CIFS No Yes Yes Yes Yes Read/Write No Yes
mime No No Yes No No No No No

Naming

All filenames are treated as URIs. One of the consequences of this is you have to encode the '%' character using %25.
Depending on the filesystem additional characters are encoded if needed. This is done automatically, but might be reflected in the filename.

Examples

Many file systems accept a userid and password as part of the url. However, storing a password in clear text in a file is usually unacceptable. To help with that Commons VFS provides a mechanism to encrypt the password. It should be noted though, that this is not completely secure since the password needs to be unencrypted before Commons VFS can use it.

To create an encrypted password do:

java -cp commons-vfs-2.0.jar org.apache.commons.vfs2.util.EncryptUtil encrypt mypassword

where mypassword is the password you want to encrypt. The result of this will be a single line of output containing uppercase hex characters. For example,

java -cp commons-vfs-2.0.jar org.apache.commons.vfs2.util.EncryptUtil encrypt WontUBee9 D7B82198B272F5C93790FEB38A73C7B8

Then cut the output returned and paste it into the URL as:

https://testuser:{D7B82198B272F5C93790FEB38A73C7B8}@myhost.com/svn/repos/vfstest/trunk

VFS treats a password enclosed in {} as being encrypted and will decrypt the password before using it.

Local Files

Provides access to the files on the local physical file system.

URI Format

[file://]_absolute-path_

Where_absolute-path_ is a valid absolute file name for the local platform. UNC names are supported under Windows.

Examples

Zip, Jar and Tar

Provides read-only access to the contents of Zip, Jar and Tar files.

URI Format

zip://_arch-file-uri_[!_absolute-path_]

jar://_arch-file-uri_[!_absolute-path_]

tar://_arch-file-uri_[!_absolute-path_]

tgz://_arch-file-uri_[!_absolute-path_]

tbz2://_arch-file-uri_[!_absolute-path_]

Wherearch-file-uri refers to a file of any supported type, including other zip files. Note: if you would like to use the ! as normal character it must be escaped using %21.
tgz and tbz2 are convenience for tar:gz and tar:bz2.

Examples

gzip and bzip2

Provides read-only access to the contents of gzip and bzip2 files.

URI Format

gz://_compressed-file-uri_

bz2://_compressed-file-uri_

Wherecompressed-file-uri refers to a file of any supported type. There is no need to add a ! part to the URI if you read the content of the file you always will get the uncompressed version.

Examples

HDFS

Provides (read-only) access to files in an Apache Hadoop File System (HDFS). On Windows the integration test is disabled by default, as it requires binaries.

URI Format

hdfs://_hostname_[:_port_][_absolute-path_]

Examples

HTTP and HTTPS

Provides access to files on an HTTP server.

URI Format

http://[_username_[:_password_]@]_hostname_[:_port_][_absolute-path_]

https://[_username_[:_password_]@]_hostname_[:_port_][_absolute-path_]

File System Options

Examples

WebDAV

Provides access to files on a WebDAV server through the modulescommons-vfs2-jackrabbit1 and commons-vfs2-jackrabbit2.

URI Format

webdav://[_username_[:_password_]@]_hostname_[:_port_][_absolute-path_]

File System Options

Examples

FTP

Provides access to the files on an FTP server.

URI Format

ftp://[_username_[:_password_]@]_hostname_[:_port_][_relative-path_]

Examples

By default, the path is relative to the user's home directory. This can be changed with:

FtpFileSystemConfigBuilder.getInstance().setUserDirIsRoot(options, false);

FTPS

Provides access to the files on an FTP server over SSL.

URI Format

ftps://[_username_[:_password_]@]_hostname_[:_port_][_absolute-path_]

Examples

SFTP

Provides access to the files on an SFTP server (that is, an SSH or SCP server).

URI Format

sftp://[_username_[:_password_]@]_hostname_[:_port_][_relative-path_]

Examples

By default, the path is relative to the user's home directory. This can be changed with:

FtpFileSystemConfigBuilder.getInstance().setUserDirIsRoot(options, false);

CIFS

The CIFS (sandbox) filesystem provides access to a CIFS server, such as a Samba server, or a Windows share.

URI Format

smb://[_username_[:_password_]@]_hostname_[:_port_][_absolute-path_]

Examples

Temporary Files

Provides access to a temporary file system, or scratchpad, that is deleted when Commons VFS shuts down. The temporary file system is backed by a local file system.

URI Format

tmp://[_absolute-path_]

Examples

Resource

This is not really a filesystem, it just tries to look up a resource using javas ClassLoader.getResource() and creates a VFS url for further processing.

URI Format

res://[_path_]

Examples

RAM

A filesystem which stores all the data in memory (one byte array for each file content).

URI Format

ram://[_path_]

File System Options

Examples

MIME

This (sandbox) filesystem can read mails and its attachements like archives.
If a part in the parsed mail has no name, a dummy name will be generated. The dummy name is: _body_part_X where X will be replaced by the part number.

URI Format

mime://_mime-file-uri_[!_absolute-path_]

Examples