Convert File To Path in Java

1. Introduction

In this article, we are going to present how to convert File into Path in Java. A Path is an object that may be used to locate a file in a file system. This article will cover the two most common solutions from Java 7+.

2. Convert File to Path using toPath() method

Path object was introduced in Java 7. In this version of JDK, we can get the Path using the File.toPath() method.

package com.frontbackend.java.io.path;

import java.io.File;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.nio.file.Path;

public class ConvertFileToPath {

    public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
        File file = new File("/tmp/test.txt");
        Path path = file.toPath();

        System.out.println(path.toString());
    }
}

3. Convert File to Path using Paths object

The Paths object is a dedicated class that consists exclusively of static methods that return a Path.

In the following example code we used Paths.get(...) method to convert File to Path:

package com.frontbackend.java.io.path;

import java.io.File;
import java.nio.file.Path;
import java.nio.file.Paths;

public class ConvertFileToPathUsingPaths {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        File file = new File("/tmp/test.txt");
        Path path = Paths.get(file.toURI());

        System.out.println(path.toString());
    }
}

4. Conclusion

In this article, we presented ways to convert File to Path. We use the Path object to locate a file in the file system. Bear in mind that Path is only available for Java 7+ programs.