Unable to list image files in the ApplicationDocumentsDirectory even though I can load/display them

Question

I'm trying to get a list of files in my app's documents directory using path_provider and getApplicationDocumentsDirectory() along with Directory(appFolder).listSync() from dart:io. While I can load the image files from this directory and view them using flutter's Image.file function, I cannot see any of the image/jpg files generated by my app in the directory listing. I've also tried loading the files using File(imagePath) with the same result.

I cannot understand why Image.File(imagePath) can find, load and display the image file successfully while running File(imagePath) gives an OS Error: No such file or directory . For additional context - these files are being generated using the camera package for flutter. I'm seeing this on Android so far (have not testing this on iOS yet).

Code previews

Code to get appFolder in both cases

import 'package:provider/provider.dart';

final dbFolder = await getApplicationDocumentsDirectory();

Code to display the images

import 'package:flutter/material.dart';

// just the relevant code to display the image
Center(
  child: Image.file(Platform.isIOS
     ? File(appFolder + '/' + imagePath)
     : File(appFolder + imagePath)),
),

Code to list the files in the folder

  import 'dart:io';

  void _getDirectoryList() async {
    fileList = Directory(appFolder).listSync(followLinks: true);
    final List<FileSystemEntity> entities =
        await Directory(appFolder).list().toList();
    entities.forEach(print);
  }

I'm doing all this to create an archive of the app db and user generated image files, but have gotten stuck at not finding the user-generated image files in the ApplicationDocumentsDirectory.

Any help or pointers would be appreciated!

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 27 '22 at 15:24

Look at what 'print' in entities.forEach does. If you are trying to print the names of the files you want to use debugPrint(item)

void _getDirectoryList() async {
  fileList = 
    Directory(appFolder).listSync(followLinks: true);
    final List<FileSystemEntity> entities =
      await Directory(appFolder).list().toList();
    entities.forEach((item) => debugPrint(item.toString());
}

Look into debugPrint and forEach to learn more about what is going wrong.

Unable to list image files in the ApplicationDocumentsDirectory even though I can load/display them

1 Answers1