title: How to browse the file system of a server machine when connecting with a client (java)
body: <p>I'm in the process of making a proof of concept to dissociate the business code from the gui for the ps3 media server (http://www.ps3mediaserver.org/). For this I've got a project hosted at source forge (http://sourceforge.net/projects/pms-remote/). The client should be a simple front end to configure the server from any location within a network having the rights to connect to the server.</p>
  
  <p>On the server side, all service have been exposed using javax.jws and the client proxy has been generated using wsimport.</p>
  
  <p>One of the features of the current features (actually, the only blocking one), is to define the folders that will be shared by the server. As the client and server are now running as a single application on the same machine, it's trivial to browse its file system.</p>
  
  <p><strong>Problem</strong>: I'd like to expose the file system of the server machine through web services. This will allow any client (the one I'm currently working on is the same as the original using java swing) to show available folders and to select the ones that will be shown by the media server. In the end the only thing I'm interested in is an absolute folder path (string).</p>
  
  <p>I thought I'd find a library giving me this functionality but couldn't find any.
  Browsing the files using a UNC path and accessing a distant machine doesn't seem feasible, as it wouldn't be transparent for the user.</p>
  
  <p>For now I don't want to worry about security issues, I'll figure these out once the rest seems feasible.</p>
  
  <p>I'd be grateful for any input.
  Thanks, Philippe </p>