Find the most recent file/folder in a folder with Java 8

A simple snippet that shows how Java 8 lambdas can be really nice to replace operations that used to require a lot of boilerplate in earlier versions of Java.

If you want to find the most recent file or subfolder in a folder with Java 8, here’s what you need to do:

Path parentFolder = Paths.get("path", "to", "your", "file");

Optional<File> mostRecentFileOrFolder =
    Arrays
        .stream(parentFolder.toFile().listFiles())
        .max(
            (f1, f2) -> Long.compare(f1.lastModified(),
                f2.lastModified()));

if (mostRecentFolder.isPresent()) {
    File mostRecent = mostRecentFileOrFolder.get();
    System.out.println("most recent is " + mostRecent.getPath());
} else {
    System.out.println("folder is empty!");
}

The very nice thing is that you can take advantage of the flexibility of Java 8 streams to either make the operation parallel (just throw in a parallel() call after Arrays.stream()), or to filter results according to other criteria.

For example, if you’re only interested in one type of child elements (a file or a folder), you could…

// if you're only interested in files...
Optional<File> mostRecentFile =
    Arrays
        .stream(parentFolder.toFile().listFiles())
        .filter(f -> f.isFile())
        .max(
            (f1, f2) -> Long.compare(f1.lastModified(),
                f2.lastModified()));

// if you're interested in folders...
Optional<File> mostRecentFolder =
    Arrays
        .stream(parentFolder.toFile().listFiles())
        .filter(f -> f.isDirectory())
        .max(
            (f1, f2) -> Long.compare(f1.lastModified(),
                f2.lastModified()));