Local files

A LocalFileRepository stores all its resources in a root directory on the local filesystem. Folders are created as actual sub-directories. LocalFileRepository uses Java File objects internally.

Configuring a LocalFileRepository

To configure a LocalFileRepository you assign it a unique repository id and specify the root folder in which to store the physical files.

Configuration of a new local file repository

@Bean
FileRepository documentRepository() {
    return LocalFileRepository.builder()
                              .repositoryId( "documents" ) (1)
                              .rootFolder( "stored-data/documents" ) (2)
                              .pathGenerator( DateFormatPathGenerator.YEAR_MONTH_DAY ) (3)
                              .build();
}

1	the unique repository id, all file descriptors will have this repository id
2	all physical files will be stored in the directory `stored-data/documents`, relative to the working directory of the application
3	optionally specify a path generator which should be used for generating unique file descriptors

All physical data will be stored in the root folder stored-data/documents as separate files. The file name will correspond to the FileDescriptor file name, any folder id will be created as sub-directory in the root folder.

Table 1. Example file descriptor to local file mapping
File descriptor	Physical file
`documents:logo.png`	`stored-data/documents/logo.png`
`documents:images/website:logo.png`	`stored-data/documents/images/website.logo.png`

Generated file descriptors

The FileRepository interface allows you to generate unique file resources without having to manually build a FileDescriptor. This simply gives you a location where you can store the actual file.

FileRepository.generateFileDescriptor()
FileDescriptor.createFileResource()

LocalFileRepository extends AbstractFileRepository which uses a UUID to generate a unique file descriptor.

Path generator

You can optionally configure a PathGenerator on a LocalFileRepository. If the one is set, the PathGenerator instance will be used to generate a sub-directory structure to store the generated file resources in.

DateFormatPathGenerator is a default implementation that uses the current date for creating sub-directories.

Using a PathGenerator can help distribute the physical files, avoiding OS performance problems when there are too many files in a single directory.

Automatic repository creation

FileManagerModule also has a LocalFileRepositoryFactory component. This is FileRepositoryFactory implementation which creates local file repositories in a top-level folder.

A local repository factory is preconfigured and can be activated by configuring the top-level folder using a property:

fileManagerModule.local-repositories-root=./my-data

Every repository created will have its own root folder matching the repository id. For example, the following file descriptor:

images:logos:logo.png

would map to:

./mydata/images/logos/logo.png

The default repository factory also attaches a DateFormatPathGenerator to all created file repositories. Every generated file resource will be put in a nested path structure based on the current date (yyyy/MM/dd).

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