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FATFileSystem

FATFileSystem class hierarchy

The FAT file system is an established disk-oriented file system that you can find on Mbed OS, Windows, Linux and macOS. Due to its age and popularity, the FAT file system has become the standard for portable storage, such as flash drivers and SD cards.

  • Portable - Due to its nearly universal support across operating systems, the FAT file system provides access to storage from both the embedded system and your PC.

  • Embedded - Built on the ChanFS project, the FAT file system is optimized for embedded systems.

For additional information, please see the storage overview page.

Use cases

The main reason to use the FAT file system is its usefulness on portable storage. Because of this, most applications use FAT in conjunction with an SD card.

The first step to using the FAT file system is formatting storage with FAT. You can do this on a PC with the native format command or on Mbed OS with the format function.

Note: The FAT file system requires at minimum 256 erase blocks. You can find the number of blocks on a block device by dividing the block device's size by its erase size.

The FAT file system supports external flash; however, it must allocate a full erase block for internal operations, which can become large for some forms of flash. If RAM consumption becomes a problem, we suggest switching to LittleFileSystem. The Mbed OS file system APIs make switching file systems a straightforward task. One common strategy is to use the FAT file system for debugging and switch to LittleFileSystem when the application becomes stable.

The FAT file system is thread safe. Although the FAT file system is built on the ChanFS project, synchronizing in the C++ layer allows you to use the C++ RTOS APIs directly.

Usage

Instantiate the FATFileSystem class with a block device and file path.

The API that this presents is the standard Mbed OS file system API. Once declared, Mbed OS provides the retargeting layer for the standard C library.

You can swap the FAT file system in place with other Mbed OS file systems, which is a good method for prototyping applications.

To configure this class, please see the FileSystem configuration documentation.

FATFileSystem class reference

Public Member Functions
 FATFileSystem (const char *name=NULL, BlockDevice *bd=NULL)
 Lifetime of the FAT file system. More...
virtual int mount (BlockDevice *bd)
 Mount a file system to a block device. More...
virtual int unmount ()
 Unmount a file system from the underlying block device. More...
virtual int reformat (BlockDevice *bd, int allocation_unit)
 Reformat a file system, results in an empty and mounted file system. More...
virtual int reformat (BlockDevice *bd=NULL)
 Reformat a file system, results in an empty and mounted file system. More...
virtual int remove (const char *path)
 Remove a file from the file system. More...
virtual int rename (const char *path, const char *newpath)
 Rename a file in the file system. More...
virtual int stat (const char *path, struct stat *st)
 Store information about the file in a stat structure. More...
virtual int mkdir (const char *path, mode_t mode)
 Create a directory in the file system. More...
virtual int statvfs (const char *path, struct statvfs *buf)
 Store information about the mounted file system in a statvfs structure. More...
Static Public Member Functions
static int format (BlockDevice *bd, bd_size_t cluster_size=0)
 Format a logical drive, FDISK partitioning rule. More...
static FileSystemget_default_instance ()
 Return the default file system. More...
Protected Member Functions
virtual int open (FileHandle **file, const char *path, int flags)
 defined(DOXYGEN_ONLY) More...
virtual int open (DirHandle **dir, const char *path)
 Open a directory on the filesystem. More...

FATFileSystem example

/* mbed Microcontroller Library
 * Copyright (c) 2006-2019 ARM Limited
 *
 * Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
 * you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
 * You may obtain a copy of the License at
 *
 *     http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
 *
 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
 * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
 * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
 * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
 * limitations under the License.
 */
#include "mbed.h"
#include <stdio.h>
#include <errno.h>
#include <functional>

#include "BlockDevice.h"

// Maximum number of elements in buffer
#define BUFFER_MAX_LEN 10
#define FORCE_REFORMAT true
// This will take the system's default block device
BlockDevice *bd = BlockDevice::get_default_instance();

// Instead of the default block device, you can define your own block device.
// For example: HeapBlockDevice with size of 2048 bytes, read size 1, write size 1 and erase size 512.
// #include "HeapBlockDevice.h"
// BlockDevice *bd = new HeapBlockDevice(2048, 1, 1, 512);


// This example uses LittleFileSystem as the default file system
#include "LittleFileSystem.h"
LittleFileSystem fs("fs");

// Uncomment the following two lines and comment the previous two to use FAT file system.
// #include "FATFileSystem.h"
// FATFileSystem fs("fs");


// Set up the button to trigger an erase
InterruptIn irq(BUTTON1);
void erase() {
    printf("Initializing the block device... ");
    fflush(stdout);
    int err = bd->init();
    printf("%s\n", (err ? "Fail :(" : "OK"));
    if (err) {
        error("error: %s (%d)\n", strerror(-err), err);
    }

    printf("Erasing the block device... ");
    fflush(stdout);
    err = bd->erase(0, bd->size());
    printf("%s\n", (err ? "Fail :(" : "OK"));
    if (err) {
        error("error: %s (%d)\n", strerror(-err), err);
    }

    printf("Deinitializing the block device... ");
    fflush(stdout);
    err = bd->deinit();
    printf("%s\n", (err ? "Fail :(" : "OK"));
    if (err) {
        error("error: %s (%d)\n", strerror(-err), err);
    }
}

static auto erase_event = mbed_event_queue()->make_user_allocated_event(erase);

// Entry point for the example
int main() {
    printf("--- Mbed OS filesystem example ---\n");

    // Setup the erase event on button press, use the event queue
    // to avoid running in interrupt context
    irq.fall(std::ref(erase_event));

    // Try to mount the filesystem
    printf("Mounting the filesystem... ");
    fflush(stdout);
    int err = fs.mount(bd);
    printf("%s\n", (err ? "Fail :(" : "OK"));
    if (err || FORCE_REFORMAT) {
        // Reformat if we can't mount the filesystem
        printf("formatting... ");
        fflush(stdout);
        err = fs.reformat(bd);
        printf("%s\n", (err ? "Fail :(" : "OK"));
        if (err) {
            error("error: %s (%d)\n", strerror(-err), err);
        }
    }

    // Open the numbers file
    printf("Opening \"/fs/numbers.txt\"... ");
    fflush(stdout);
    FILE *f = fopen("/fs/numbers.txt", "r+");
    printf("%s\n", (!f ? "Fail :(" : "OK"));
    if (!f) {
        // Create the numbers file if it doesn't exist
        printf("No file found, creating a new file... ");
        fflush(stdout);
        f = fopen("/fs/numbers.txt", "w+");
        printf("%s\n", (!f ? "Fail :(" : "OK"));
        if (!f) {
            error("error: %s (%d)\n", strerror(errno), -errno);
        }

        for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
            printf("\rWriting numbers (%d/%d)... ", i, 10);
            fflush(stdout);
            err = fprintf(f, "    %d\n", i);
            if (err < 0) {
                printf("Fail :(\n");
                error("error: %s (%d)\n", strerror(errno), -errno);
            }
        }
        printf("\rWriting numbers (%d/%d)... OK\n", 10, 10);

        printf("Seeking file... ");
        fflush(stdout);
        err = fseek(f, 0, SEEK_SET);
        printf("%s\n", (err < 0 ? "Fail :(" : "OK"));
        if (err < 0) {
            error("error: %s (%d)\n", strerror(errno), -errno);
        }
    }

    // Go through and increment the numbers
    for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
        printf("\rIncrementing numbers (%d/%d)... ", i, 10);
        fflush(stdout);

        // Get current stream position
        long pos = ftell(f);

        // Parse out the number and increment
        char buf[BUFFER_MAX_LEN];
        if (!fgets(buf, BUFFER_MAX_LEN, f)) {
            error("error: %s (%d)\n", strerror(errno), -errno);
        }
        char *endptr;
        int32_t number = strtol(buf, &endptr, 10);
        if (
            (errno == ERANGE) || // The number is too small/large
            (endptr == buf) ||   // No character was read
            (*endptr && *endptr != '\n') // The whole input was not converted
        ) {
            continue;
        }
        number += 1;

        // Seek to beginning of number
        fseek(f, pos, SEEK_SET);
    
        // Store number
        fprintf(f, "    %d\n", number);

        // Flush between write and read on same file
        fflush(f);
    }
    printf("\rIncrementing numbers (%d/%d)... OK\n", 10, 10);

    // Close the file which also flushes any cached writes
    printf("Closing \"/fs/numbers.txt\"... ");
    fflush(stdout);
    err = fclose(f);
    printf("%s\n", (err < 0 ? "Fail :(" : "OK"));
    if (err < 0) {
        error("error: %s (%d)\n", strerror(errno), -errno);
    }
    
    // Display the root directory
    printf("Opening the root directory... ");
    fflush(stdout);
    DIR *d = opendir("/fs/");
    printf("%s\n", (!d ? "Fail :(" : "OK"));
    if (!d) {
        error("error: %s (%d)\n", strerror(errno), -errno);
    }

    printf("root directory:\n");
    while (true) {
        struct dirent *e = readdir(d);
        if (!e) {
            break;
        }

        printf("    %s\n", e->d_name);
    }

    printf("Closing the root directory... ");
    fflush(stdout);
    err = closedir(d);
    printf("%s\n", (err < 0 ? "Fail :(" : "OK"));
    if (err < 0) {
        error("error: %s (%d)\n", strerror(errno), -errno);
    }

    // Display the numbers file
    printf("Opening \"/fs/numbers.txt\"... ");
    fflush(stdout);
    f = fopen("/fs/numbers.txt", "r");
    printf("%s\n", (!f ? "Fail :(" : "OK"));
    if (!f) {
        error("error: %s (%d)\n", strerror(errno), -errno);
    }

    printf("numbers:\n");
    while (!feof(f)) {
        int c = fgetc(f);
        printf("%c", c);
    }

    printf("\rClosing \"/fs/numbers.txt\"... ");
    fflush(stdout);
    err = fclose(f);
    printf("%s\n", (err < 0 ? "Fail :(" : "OK"));
    if (err < 0) {
        error("error: %s (%d)\n", strerror(errno), -errno);
    }

    // Tidy up
    printf("Unmounting... ");
    fflush(stdout);
    err = fs.unmount();
    printf("%s\n", (err < 0 ? "Fail :(" : "OK"));
    if (err < 0) {
        error("error: %s (%d)\n", strerror(-err), err);
    }
        
    printf("Mbed OS filesystem example done!\n");
}


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