File system and URLs

Files on disk, in a network or from other sources are addressed using the CCL::Url class with interface CCL::IUrl (see also CCL::UrlRef). An URL consists of a protocol, hostname, path and optional parameters.

On Windows, a file system location like C:\Users\Me\Documents is represented as file:///C:/Users/Me/Documents. You can access the file system singleton via

CCL::System::GetFileSystem (see CCL::INativeFileSystem).

The file data can be read/written with the CCL::IStream interface. The file is closed when the stream object is released.

See also Virtual File System for details about the supported protocols for files from other sources.

Example:

Url pathToFile ("file:///C:/Users/Me/Documents/data.bin");
AutoPtr<IStream> stream = System::GetFileSystem ().openStream (pathToFile, IStream::kOpenMode);

String representations of an URL

CCL::IUrl has methods for creating different string representation of an URL. Some helper classes simplifiy their use. For displaying an URL to the user, CCL::UrlFullString should be used.

Class	Shortcut for method	Description
`CCL::UrlFullString`	`IUrl::getUrl`	Full url with protocol and optionally parameters
`CCL::UrlDisplayString`	`IUrl::toDisplayString`	Beautified string for display respecting the platform conventions
`CCL::NativePath`	`IUrl::fromNativePath`	Native path string in UTF-16 enconding
`CCL::POSIXPath`	`IUrl::toPOSIXPath`	POSIX-style path (‘/’ as separator) in UTF-8 encoding

Example (Windows):

`CCL::UrlFullString`	`file:///C:/Users/CCL/Documents/Notes.txt`
`CCL::UrlDisplayString`	`C:\Users\CCL\Documents\Notes.txt`
`CCL::NativePath`	`C:\Users\CCL\Documents\Notes.txt`
`CCL::POSIXPath`	`/C:/Users/CCL/Documents/Notes.txt`