gio - resolve path with symlinks - symlink

Question

I have a gfile which points to a path containing symlinks.
E.g. there are:
/home/test/link --> /home/original
/home/original/myfile.txt
The gfile points to /home/test/link/myfile.txt. Does gio provide some method to resolve all links in this path, so that I can obtain /home/original/myfile.txt ?
Or do I need to implement that myself ?

Answer 1

Here a version which uses realpath, which might not be available on all systems:
g_file_get_resolved_path (GFile *file)
{
gchar *path;
gchar *real_path;
_thunar_return_val_if_fail (G_IS_FILE (file), NULL);
path = g_file_get_path (file);
/* No local path for file found */
if (path == NULL)
return NULL;
real_path = realpath (path, NULL);
if (real_path == NULL)
g_warning ("Failed to resolve path: '%s' Error: %s\n", path, strerror (errno));
g_free (path);
return real_path;
}

Answer 2

Still not sure if gio possibly provides some shortcut ... meanwhile I implemented it myself using gio:
/**
* g_file_get_resolved_path:
* #file : #GFile for which the path will be resolved
*
* Gets the local pathname with resolved symlinks for GFile, if one exists.
* If non-NULL, this is guaranteed to be an absolute, canonical path.
*
* This only will work if all components of the #GFile path actually do exist
*
* Return value: (nullable) (transfer full): A #gchar on success and %NULL on failure.
* The returned string should be freed with g_free() when no longer needed.
**/
char* g_file_get_resolved_path (GFile *file)
{
gchar *path;
gchar **tokenized_path;
GFileInfo *info;
gchar *real_path = NULL;
gchar *folder_name;
gchar *temp_path;
GFile *link_test;
gchar *link_target = NULL;
_thunar_return_val_if_fail (G_IS_FILE (file), NULL);
path = g_file_get_path (file);
/* No local path for file found */
if (path == NULL)
return NULL;
tokenized_path = g_strsplit (path ,"/", -1);
for (gsize i = 0; tokenized_path != NULL && tokenized_path[i] != NULL; ++i)
{
folder_name = tokenized_path[i];
temp_path = g_strjoin ("/", real_path, folder_name, NULL);
link_test = g_file_new_for_path (temp_path);
g_free (temp_path);
info = g_file_query_info (link_test, G_FILE_ATTRIBUTE_STANDARD_SYMLINK_TARGET, G_FILE_QUERY_INFO_NOFOLLOW_SYMLINKS, NULL, NULL);
if (info != NULL)
{
link_target = g_file_info_get_attribute_as_string (info, G_FILE_ATTRIBUTE_STANDARD_SYMLINK_TARGET);
g_object_unref (info);
if (link_target != NULL)
{
temp_path = real_path;
if (link_target[0] == '/')
{
/* It's an absolute link */
real_path = g_strdup (link_target);
}
else
{
/* It's a relative link */
real_path = g_strjoin ("/", real_path, link_target, NULL);
}
g_free (temp_path);
}
}
g_object_unref (link_test);
/* no symlink found ? --> just append the folder name */
if (link_target == NULL)
{
temp_path = real_path;
real_path = g_strjoin ("/", real_path, folder_name, NULL);
g_free (temp_path);
}
link_target = NULL;
}
g_strfreev (tokenized_path);
g_free (path);
return real_path;
}
Tested for some absolute and relative links.