Download a directory over HTTP in Java

Question

I have some files in a directory tree which is being served over HTTP. Given some sub-directory A, in that directory tree I want to be able to download directory A and all containing subdirectories and files.

It seems likely that a simple/direct/atomic solution exists in the some dark corner of Java. Does anyone know how to do this?

A webcrawler will not solve my problem since files in sub-directories may link to directories that are not subdirectories.

==Update==

The directories and files must be hosted in static manner.

The server is statically hosting files in a directory tree, the client is running Java and attempting to copy some branch of the directory tree using HTTP.

VFS is the answer to this, unfortunately I answered the question myself and so can't choose it as the answer until two days from now. If someone would write up of my answer I would be happy to mark their write up as the answer.

==Further Update==

VFS is in fact not the answer. VFS will not list directories over HTTP, as stated here. There does seem to be a few people that are interested in that functionality.

Answer 1

My first suggestion would be to create a servlet/jsp which recursiveley reads the directory structure (using java.io.File), reads all files, puts them in one zip (java.util.zip), and sends it to the browers for download.