Renaming successive folders and files in android

Question

I have a file at location a/b/c.txt . I want to move this file to location d/e/f.txt .I want to rename the folder/directory a to d ,b to e and file c.txt to f.txt .How to do this in android?

public void moveFile(View view) {
            File file = new File(Environment.getExternalStorageDirectory().getAbsolutePath() + File.separator + "a" + File.separator + "b" + File.separator + "c.txt");
            if (file.exists()) {
                boolean res = file.renameTo(new File(Environment.getExternalStorageDirectory().getAbsoluteFile() + File.separator + "d" + File.separator + "e" + File.separator + "f.txt"));


                Toast.makeText(MainActivity.this, String.valueOf(res), Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();
            }

        }

Answer 1

You are very much on the right track when you say “I want to rename the folder/directory a to d ,b to e and file c.txt to f.txt .” You just have to rename one directory at a time and the file itself separately:

    String externalStorageDirAbsPath = Environment.getExternalStorageDirectory().getAbsolutePath();
    File file = new File(externalStorageDirAbsPath + File.separator + "a" + File.separator + "b" + File.separator + "c.txt");
    if (file.exists()) {
        // first rename a to d
        boolean res = new File(externalStorageDirAbsPath + File.separator + "a")
                        .renameTo(new File(externalStorageDirAbsPath + File.separator + "d"));
        if (res) {
            // rename b to e
            res = new File(externalStorageDirAbsPath + File.separator + "d" + File.separator + "b")
                    .renameTo(new File(externalStorageDirAbsPath + File.separator + "d" + File.separator + "e"));
            if (res) {
                // rename c.txt to f.txt
                res = new File(externalStorageDirAbsPath + File.separator + "d" + File.separator + "e" + File.separator + "c.txt")
                        .renameTo(new File(externalStorageDirAbsPath + File.separator + "d" + File.separator + "e" + File.separator + "f.txt"));
            }
        }
        Toast.makeText(MainActivity.this, String.valueOf(res), Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();
    }

I have tested the central part of the code on Mac OS X. I have not tested on Android. If there’s a typo in the hand translation back to Android code, I hope you’ll be able to figure it out.

Instead of the File class you may want to look into the newer java.nio.file package, the Path class may give you a little convenience here, but I think you would still have to rename one directory at a time and the file separately, just as here.