How to Copy Directories in Java

To copy a directory from one location to another with all it’s sub-folders and files they contain, use below code which uses recursion to traverse the directory structure and then uses Files.copy() function to copy files.

Folder copy example sourcecode

In this example, I am copying all the sub directories and files under c:\temp to a new location c:\tempNew.

package com.howtodoinjava.examples.io;

import java.io.File;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.nio.file.Files;
import java.nio.file.StandardCopyOption;

public class DirectoryCopyExample 
{
	public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException 
	{
		//Source directory which you want to copy to new location
		File sourceFolder = new File("c:\\temp");
		
		//Target directory where files should be copied
		File destinationFolder = new File("c:\\tempNew");

		//Call Copy function
		copyFolder(sourceFolder, destinationFolder);
	}
	/**
	 * This function recursively copy all the sub folder and files from sourceFolder to destinationFolder
	 * */
	private static void copyFolder(File sourceFolder, File destinationFolder) throws IOException
	{
		//Check if sourceFolder is a directory or file
		//If sourceFolder is file; then copy the file directly to new location
		if (sourceFolder.isDirectory()) 
		{
			//Verify if destinationFolder is already present; If not then create it
			if (!destinationFolder.exists()) 
			{
				destinationFolder.mkdir();
				System.out.println("Directory created :: " + destinationFolder);
			}
			
			//Get all files from source directory
			String files[] = sourceFolder.list();
			
			//Iterate over all files and copy them to destinationFolder one by one
			for (String file : files) 
			{
				File srcFile = new File(sourceFolder, file);
				File destFile = new File(destinationFolder, file);
				
				//Recursive function call
				copyFolder(srcFile, destFile);
			}
		}
		else 
		{
			//Copy the file content from one place to another 
			Files.copy(sourceFolder.toPath(), destinationFolder.toPath(), StandardCopyOption.REPLACE_EXISTING);
			System.out.println("File copied :: " + destinationFolder);
		}
	}
}

Output:

Directory created :: c:\tempNew
File copied :: c:\tempNew\testcopied.txt
File copied :: c:\tempNew\testoriginal.txt
File copied :: c:\tempNew\testOut.txt

Verify that files are correctly copied or not. Feel free to modify the code and use it the way you like.

Happy Learning !!