Java - get the newest file in a directory?

Question

Does anybody have a snippet of Java that can return the newest file in a directory (or knowledge of a library that simplifies this sort of thing)?

Answer 1

This works perfectly fine for me:

import org.apache.commons.io.FileUtils;
import org.apache.commons.io.comparator.LastModifiedFileComparator;
import org.apache.commons.io.filefilter.WildcardFileFilter;

...

/* Get the newest file for a specific extension */
public File getTheNewestFile(String filePath, String ext) {
    File theNewestFile = null;
    File dir = new File(filePath);
    FileFilter fileFilter = new WildcardFileFilter("*." + ext);
    File[] files = dir.listFiles(fileFilter);

    if (files.length > 0) {
        /** The newest file comes first **/
        Arrays.sort(files, LastModifiedFileComparator.LASTMODIFIED_REVERSE);
        theNewestFile = files[0];
    }

    return theNewestFile;
}