Listing the contents of a folder

This topic demonstrates how to list the contents of a folder. With Xceed's FileSystem-based products, a folder is a folder: it does not matter if it is located within a zip file, on disk or in memory.

Basic steps

To list the contents of a folder, the following steps must be performed:

Retrieve a reference to a folder using an AbstractFolder-derived class appropriate for the folder you need to work with, such as DiskFolder, ZippedFolder, ZipArchive, MemoryFolder, IsolatedFolder, FtpFolder, etc.
Call the GetFiles method to retrieve a listing of the files contained within the folder.
You can now loop through the files and extract the desired information.

Demonstration

This example demonstrates how to list the contents of a folder located on disk.

VB.NET Copy Code

VB.NET	Copy Code
`Imports Xceed.FileSystem` `Dim folder As New DiskFolder( "c:\temp" ) Dim f As AbstractFile` `For Each f In folder.GetFiles( True ) ListBox1.Items.Add( f.FullName ) Next`

Imports Xceed.FileSystem

Dim folder As New DiskFolder( "c:\temp" ) Dim f As AbstractFile

For Each f In folder.GetFiles( True ) ListBox1.Items.Add( f.FullName ) Next

C# Copy Code

C#	Copy Code
`using Xceed.FileSystem;` `DiskFolder folder = new DiskFolder( @"c:\temp" );` `foreach( AbstractFile f in folder.GetFiles( true ) ) { Console.WriteLine( f.FullName ); }`

using Xceed.FileSystem;

DiskFolder folder = new DiskFolder( @"c:\temp" );

foreach( AbstractFile f in folder.GetFiles( true ) ) { Console.WriteLine( f.FullName ); }

Things you should consider

The main questions you should ask yourself when listing the contents of a folder are:

Do you want to filter (specify specific files and folders) the items that are to be listed? Use filters.
Do you also want to retrieve a listing of the folders? Use the GetFolders method.
Do you want to retrieve a listing of both files and folders? Use the GetItems method.
Do you want to retrieve a reference to a single file or folder? Use the GetFile or GetFolder methods.
Do you want to display the status of the operation? See the Events topic.
Do you want to filter your list of files or folders? See the Filters topic.