Dart accessing the name of a File or Directory

Question

How do I read the name of a File or a Directory?

There is a property 'path' but that returns the entire file path.

Would be nice to have a property like 'name' that just returns the last part of the path.

In Java there is a method called File.name();

Answer 1

You can use the path package to do that :

import 'package:path/path.dart' as path;
main() {
  path.basename('path/to/foo.dart'); // -> 'foo.dart'
  path.basename('path/to');          // -> 'to'
}

See the path package documentation for more explanations.

Answer 2

Since Dart Version 2.6 has been announced and it's available for flutter version 1.12 and higher, You can use extension methods. It will provide a more readable and global solution to this problem.

file_extensions.dart :

import 'dart:io';

extension FileExtention on FileSystemEntity{
  String get name {
    return this?.path?.split("/")?.last;
  }
}

and name getter is added to all the file objects. You can simply just call name on any file.

main() {
  File file = new File("/dev/dart/work/hello/app.dart");
  print(file.name);
}

Read the document for more information.

Note: Since extension is a new feature, it's not fully integrated into IDEs yet and it may not be recognized automatically. You have to import your extension manually wherever you need that. Just make sure the extension file is imported:

import 'package:<your_extention_path>/file_extentions.dart';