Directory equiv. to FileDialog class?

Question

I want to select directories. The only other option I could think of is to model the drive paths as JTrees and the nodes as AbstractPaths...the problem with this is I can't work out how to initialise the JTree with the drives available on my computer without hard coding them which obviously isn't a very flexible solution! Or perhaps would this be a very long winded way of achieving what I want?

Answer 1

Thanks for your reply, I will look into that JFileChoser class. As I had a bit of spare time this afternoon I decided to try and program what I wanted anyway, found the listRoots() method and produced this;
public class DirectoryListing extends JPanel {
  private JTree directoryTree;
  //testing...
  private DefaultMutableTreeNode selectedNode;
  public DirectoryListing() {
    loadDrives();
    directoryTree.setRootVisible(false);
    directoryTree.setToggleClickCount(1);
    directoryTree.addTreeSelectionListener(new MyTreeListener());
    directoryTree.setCellRenderer(new MyCellRenderer());
    directoryTree.setShowsRootHandles(true);
    JScrollPane treeSP = new JScrollPane();
    treeSP.getViewport().add(directoryTree);
    setLayout(new BorderLayout());
    add(treeSP, BorderLayout.CENTER);
  public void loadDrives(){
    DefaultMutableTreeNode root = new DefaultMutableTreeNode();
    File[] availableDrives = File.listRoots();
    for (int i = 0; i < availableDrives.length; i++) {
      DefaultMutableTreeNode aNode = new DefaultMutableTreeNode(availableDrives);
root.insert(aNode, root.getChildCount());
directoryLookAhead(aNode);
directoryTree = new JTree(root);
public class MyTreeListener implements TreeSelectionListener {
public void valueChanged(TreeSelectionEvent e) {
selectedNode = (DefaultMutableTreeNode) directoryTree.getLastSelectedPathComponent();
if (selectedNode != null) {
subDirectoryLookAhead(selectedNode);
public class MyCellRenderer extends JLabel implements TreeCellRenderer {
public MyCellRenderer() {
setOpaque(false);
public Component getTreeCellRendererComponent(JTree tree,
Object value,
boolean sel,
boolean expanded,
boolean leaf,
int row,
boolean hasFocus) {
File aFile = (File) ( ( (DefaultMutableTreeNode) value).getUserObject());
String text = aFile.getName();
if(text.length() == 0){
text = aFile.getPath();
setText(text);
if (sel || expanded) {
setIcon(UIManager.getIcon("Tree.openIcon"));
}else {
setIcon(UIManager.getIcon("Tree.closedIcon"));
if (sel) {
setForeground(Color.green);
}else {
setForeground(Color.black);
return this;
public void subDirectoryLookAhead(DefaultMutableTreeNode aNode) {
directoryLookAhead(aNode);
for (Enumeration n = aNode.children() ; n.hasMoreElements() ;) {
DefaultMutableTreeNode subNode = (DefaultMutableTreeNode) n.nextElement();
directoryLookAhead(subNode);
( (DefaultTreeModel) directoryTree.getModel()).reload();
public void directoryLookAhead(DefaultMutableTreeNode aNode){
File aFile = (File) aNode.getUserObject();
File[] directoryListing = aFile.listFiles();
if (directoryListing != null && directoryListing.length > 0 && aNode.getChildCount() == 0) {
for (int i = 0; i < directoryListing.length; i++) {
if (directoryListing[i].isDirectory()) {
aNode.insert(new DefaultMutableTreeNode(directoryListing[i]),aNode.getChildCount());
And, surprising it works, I must be getting better at this lark but alas, there's a few problems;
-You can only select leafs on the JTree - not nodes themselves - this is no good.
-If you invoke the JTree method 'setToggleClickCount' to anything other than 1, the tree keeps collapsing when reloading.
-Regardless of the setToggleClickCount if you double click on a node it also collapses the tree.
-I can't work how to get the hieracy lines to show.
-Finally, when you expand a node such as the windows directory (i.e. one with lots of sub directories) there's a little delay (i.e. its not as efficient as a standard implementation would be, when you run a file selector in any 'properly programed' program :) How does the 'proper' implementation differ from what I've tried to do here?
thanks for looking!