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Listing all SDCard Filenames with extensions in android

nilan avtar

Written by

Nilanchala,  4 min read,  2.58K views, updated on Sept. 17, 2023

Here in this example we will see how to list all files present in SDCard of your android device. In the below example it searches for all of the SDCard folders and lists all of the images available. You may extend this example to list other file formats.

Steps

  1. First let us create a new Android project and name it as you like. This example uses minSdkVersion=8 and  targetSdkVersion=”18″ and tested over HTC Onex (Android 4.2) device.
  2. Make sure, you have SDCard with some files to list.

Android Activity Layout (activity_main.xml)

<ScrollView xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools"
    android:id="@+id/scrollView"
    android:layout_width="fill_parent"
    android:layout_height="fill_parent" >

    <LinearLayout
        android:id="@+id/view"
        android:layout_width="match_parent"
        android:layout_height="match_parent"
        android:orientation="vertical"
        android:padding="8dp" >
    </LinearLayout>

</ScrollView>

From the above code snippet, you can observe that I have taken a ScrollView and a LinearLayout as its child. This LinearLayout will hold all of the TextViews that shows filenames.

Android Activity (MainActivity.java)

package com.javatechig.listallfiles;

import java.io.File;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import com.example.listallfiles.R;
import android.app.Activity;
import android.graphics.Color;
import android.os.Bundle;
import android.os.Environment;
import android.widget.LinearLayout;
import android.widget.TextView;

public class MainActivity extends Activity {

	private File root;
	private ArrayList<File> fileList = new ArrayList<File>();
	private LinearLayout view;

	@Override
	protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
		super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
		setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);

		view = (LinearLayout) findViewById(R.id.view);

		//getting SDcard root path
		root = new File(Environment.getExternalStorageDirectory()
				.getAbsolutePath());
		getfile(root);

		for (int i = 0; i < fileList.size(); i++) {
			TextView textView = new TextView(this);
			textView.setText(fileList.get(i).getName());
			textView.setPadding(5, 5, 5, 5);

			System.out.println(fileList.get(i).getName());

			if (fileList.get(i).isDirectory()) {
				textView.setTextColor(Color.parseColor("#FF0000"));
			}
			view.addView(textView);
		}

	}

	public ArrayList<File> getfile(File dir) {
		File listFile[] = dir.listFiles();
		if (listFile != null && listFile.length > 0) {
			for (int i = 0; i < listFile.length; i++) {

				if (listFile[i].isDirectory()) {
					fileList.add(listFile[i]);
					getfile(listFile[i]);

				} else {
					if (listFile[i].getName().endsWith(".png")
							|| listFile[i].getName().endsWith(".jpg")
							|| listFile[i].getName().endsWith(".jpeg")
							|| listFile[i].getName().endsWith(".gif"))

					{
						fileList.add(listFile[i]);
					}
				}

			}
		}
		return fileList;
	}

}

Output

Example Listing All Files In Android