CoronaSDK: How to know if a file exists?

Update: Dejay was correct, you have to try and open the file to know for sure if it’s there or not.

Want to know if a file exists before you use it?

Lately, I’ve been wanting something a little more dynamic in my projects for opening various Scenes (think Director, but not).   I needed a way of looking to see if a file existed or not before I tried to load it up.  Here’s the result:

function fileExists(fileName, base)
  assert(fileName, "fileName is missing")
  local base = base or system.ResourceDirectory
  local filePath = system.pathForFile( fileName, base )
  local exists = false
 
  if (filePath) then -- file may exist. won't know until you open it
    local fileHandle = io.open( filePath, "r" )
    if (fileHandle) then -- nil if no file found
      exists = true
      io.close(fileHandle)
    end
  end
 
  return(exists)
end

Typical usage:

if fileExists("myGame.lua") then
  -- do something wonderful
end

If the file does not exist, the CoronaSDK library function system.pathForFile() returns nil.  It also returns a Warning in the console, which can be safely ignored.

By default it checks your app’s asset directory (system.ResourceDirectory), however, if you’d like to check if a file you created exists you can pass in an alternative base path like so:

if fileExists("some_file.txt", system.DocumentsDirectory) then
  -- do something wonderful
end

The three valid options for base path are:

1. system.ResourceDirectory
2. system.DocumentsDirectory
3. system.TemporaryDirectory