Re: Remote file system in Java

From:

Tom Anderson <twic@urchin.earth.li>

Newsgroups:

comp.lang.java.programmer

Date:

Sat, 20 Jun 2009 02:25:38 +0100

Message-ID:

<alpine.DEB.1.10.0906200219420.1535@urchin.earth.li>

On Thu, 18 Jun 2009, Spud wrote:

I have a need to access files on distributed servers running our app.
Ideally, I'd have a pure-Java solution that would provide the equivalent of
java.io.File and FileInputStream/FileOutputStream for files on another box.
Of course, the other box would also be running our app and listening for file
I/O requests.

The normal way to do this is use FTP, SCP, mapped drives, NFS, etc. and put a
Java wrapper around these apps. I'd really rather not, because it complicates
the install and I don't have control over the systems where our app runs. I
don't know in advance what the OS will be, for example. Hence the desire for
a pure-Java solution that just works.

Anyone know how to do this? Are there any good libraries available?

I don't know of one. I'd write a quick RMI wrapper round the java.io types
you need. Something like:

interface RemoteFile extends Remote {
public String getName() throws RemoteException;
public RemoteFile getParentFile() throws RemoteException;
public RemoteFileInputStream getInputStream() throws IOException, RemoteException; // replaces new FileInputStream(f)
// etc
}

interface RemoteFileSystem extends Remote {
public RemoteFile createFile(String path) throws RemoteException; // replaces new File()
}

The beauty of using interfaces is that you can then do something cleverer
if performance isn't good enough, without changing the calling code.

tom

--
NO REAL THAN YOU ARE -- Ego Leonard, The Zandvoort Man