File ML

A small, cross-platform C++17 library of filesystem utilities and a companion to Network ML. It provides the ML::File class. A friendly method-based wrapper over and : text and binary read/write, append, copy/move, directory listing, recursive folder create/delete, and exists/size/last-modified queries.

#include "fileml.h"

ML::File f;
f.createFolders("data/cache");
f.createFile("data/cache/note.txt", "hello\n");
f.appendFile("data/cache/note.txt", "world\n");
std::string text = f.readFile("data/cache/note.txt");

// binary is just as easy
std::vector<unsigned char> bytes = { 0x00, 0xff, 0x10 };
f.writeBytes("data/cache/blob.bin", bytes);
auto back = f.readBytes("data/cache/blob.bin");

API (ML::File)

• create/write: createFolder, createFolders, createFile, appendFile, writeBytes
• atomic writes: writeFileAtomic, writeBytesAtomic (write to a same-directory temp then rename; a crash mid-write leaves the target untouched)
• read: readFile (text, line-based), readAll (exact bytes), readBytes (raw)
• line-based text: readLines (splits on '\n', drops the empty tail, strips '\r' from CRLF), writeLines (joins with '\n' and adds a trailing newline)
• delete/copy/move: deleteFile, deleteFolder (recursive), copyFile, moveFile
• listing: listFiles (basenames, one level), listFilesRecursive (every file under a folder, returned as /-separated paths relative to it)
• glob listing: listFiles(folder, pattern) and listFilesRecursive(folder, pattern) with shell-style *, ?, [set] matched against basenames
• temp helpers: makeTempFile(prefix="fileml"), makeTempDir(prefix="fileml") - create a fresh entry under the system temp dir and return its path
• query/metadata: exists, isFile, isDirectory, fileCharacterCount, fileSize (-1 if missing), lastModified (unix seconds, -1 if missing)

Using it

Different methods of using it below:

vcpkg registry

File ML is published through the same vcpkg registry as Network ML. Add the registry in a vcpkg-configuration.json, then:

{ "dependencies": [ "file-ml" ] }

find_package(FileML CONFIG REQUIRED)
target_link_libraries(myapp PRIVATE FileML::fileml)

FetchContent

include(FetchContent)
FetchContent_Declare(FileML
    GIT_REPOSITORY https://github.com/meta-legend/file-ml-library.git
    GIT_TAG v1.0.0)
FetchContent_MakeAvailable(FileML)
target_link_libraries(myapp PRIVATE FileML::fileml)

Build from source

cmake -B build -S .
cmake --build build --config Release
cmake --install build --prefix /path/to/install

License

MIT. See LICENSE.