JavaFX representing directories - javafx

Question

I am building an application in Java where I need to represent a predefined directory in any kind of view in my window. Imagine something like a backup application where the main window displays all of the files under a specific directory.
Is there a way to do so using JavaFX? I do not care if files are going to be displayed as a tree or icons or anything really.
Thanks
edit: what I tried so far with no luck. This is my Controller class:
import javafx.scene.control.*;
import java.io.IOException;
public class ViewController {
public ListView listView;
public ViewController() throws IOException {
listView = new ListView();
listView.getItems().addAll("Iron Man", "Titanic", "Contact", "Surrogates");
}
}
and my fxml contains:
<ListView fx:id="listView" prefHeight="200.0" prefWidth="200.0" />

Answer 1

I wrote up a brief program that displays a tree of files and directories chosen by the user.
The result:
How it works:
When the user clicks the "Load Folder" button,
getNodesForDirectory is called, and recursively walks through the file tree, making tree items along the way.
Here is the code:
import java.io.File;
import javafx.application.Application;
import javafx.event.ActionEvent;
import javafx.event.EventHandler;
import javafx.scene.Scene;
import javafx.scene.control.Alert;
import javafx.scene.control.Alert.AlertType;
import javafx.scene.control.Button;
import javafx.scene.control.TreeItem;
import javafx.scene.control.TreeView;
import javafx.scene.layout.BorderPane;
import javafx.stage.DirectoryChooser;
import javafx.stage.Stage;
public class DirectoryViewer extends Application {
#Override
public void start(Stage primaryStage) {
TreeView<String> a = new TreeView<String>();
BorderPane b = new BorderPane();
Button c = new Button("Load Folder");
c.setOnAction(new EventHandler<ActionEvent>() {
#Override public void handle(ActionEvent e) {
DirectoryChooser dc = new DirectoryChooser();
dc.setInitialDirectory(new File(System.getProperty("user.home")));
File choice = dc.showDialog(primaryStage);
if(choice == null || ! choice.isDirectory()) {
Alert alert = new Alert(AlertType.ERROR);
alert.setHeaderText("Could not open directory");
alert.setContentText("The file is invalid.");
alert.showAndWait();
} else {
a.setRoot(getNodesForDirectory(choice));
}
}
});
b.setTop(c);
b.setCenter(a);
primaryStage.setScene(new Scene(b, 600, 400));
primaryStage.setTitle("Folder View");
primaryStage.show();
}
public static void main(String[] args) {
launch(args);
}
public TreeItem<String> getNodesForDirectory(File directory) { //Returns a TreeItem representation of the specified directory
TreeItem<String> root = new TreeItem<String>(directory.getName());
for(File f : directory.listFiles()) {
System.out.println("Loading " + f.getName());
if(f.isDirectory()) { //Then we call the function recursively
root.getChildren().add(getNodesForDirectory(f));
} else {
root.getChildren().add(new TreeItem<String>(f.getName()));
}
}
return root;
}
}
Good luck with your project!