How to get all sub folders and its files - UWP

Question

I have a fixed folder in desktop called student_names. it contains sub folders and each sub folders contains its files. Now I want to store those sub folders and its corresponding file names in an array list. how is it possible?

Have you tried anything, just to give you the idea you need to recursively traverse in subfolders, a little google can help you. — Ipsit Gaur
Tried with StorageFolder. But cant fix it path to Desktop/student_names — user2431727
Ohh I skipped seeing that you are accessing Desktop folder, that would not be possible in UWP, UWP works in a sandbox model. — Ipsit Gaur

Pratyay Pratyay · Accepted Answer · 2017-11-17T06:57:49

UWP Applications cannot directly access a folder (except application folders) without the user explicitly providing access to the folder (atleast once).

So in order to always be able to read/write to a specific folder you need to first ask user to select the specific folder. Once the user selects a folder you may save it to FutureAccessList which will provide you with a token to directly get access to the folder(without user intervention) for future use..

 var picker = new FolderPicker();
 picker.FileTypeFilter.Add("*");
 var folder = await picker.PickSingleFolderAsync();
 //add selected folder to FutureAccessList
StorageApplicationPermissions.FutureAccessList.AddOrReplace("futureAccessToken", folder);

From next launch (or any logic that you implement) you can access the folder and list its contents

 var folder = await StorageApplicationPermissions.FutureAccessList.
                 GetFolderAsync("futureAccessToken");
 IReadOnlyList<StorageFile> fileList = await folder.GetFilesAsync();

So, you just need to provide access to the parent folder (which in your case is student_names) then you will be able to access its sub folders and files.

Hope this helps..

How to get all sub folders and its files - UWP

2 Answers