How to save something to the desktop without hard-coding the directory?

Question

I was wondering how to get java to save a text file named hello.txt to the desktop without writing

\"C:\\\\Users\\\\Austin\\\\Desktop\"
         


        

Answer 1

User.home works, but just hardcoding the directory should be just fine.

Answer 2

import java.io.File;

class FindDesktopOnWindows {

    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        if (System.getProperty("os.name").toLowerCase().indexOf("win")<0) {
            System.err.println("Sorry, Windows only!");
            System.exit(1);
        }
        File desktopDir = new File(System.getProperty("user.home"), "Desktop");
        System.out.println(desktopDir.getPath() + " " + desktopDir.exists());

        java.awt.Desktop.getDesktop().open(desktopDir);
    }
}

I forgot different Locales. Very fragile code (even for code that starts out OS specific). See my comment below re. OS X/JFileChooser.

..how the (System.getProperty("user.home"), "Desktop") works..

Oracle helpfully provides docs for this kind of thing.

See System.getProperty(String) & new File(String,String).

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I'll cede to an expert (or a user) on this, but I don't think OS X supports any application icons or document icons directly on the ..start screen, default look, whatever.. Probably better to offer the end user a JFileChooser pointing to user.home and ask them to save the document to the desktop (or wherever they feel like).

Answer 3

This points you on desktop dir:

javax.swing.filechooser.FileSystemView.getFileSystemView().getHomeDirectory()