Develop Reference

OutputStreamWriter only writing one item into file

I have used the following code to write elements from an arraylist into a file, to be retrieved later on using StringTokenizer. It works perfect for 3 other arraylists but somehow for this particular one, it throws an exception when reading with .nextToken() and further troubleshooting with .countTokens() shows that it only has 1 token in the file. The delimiters for both write and read are the same - "," as per the other arraylists as well.
I'm puzzled why it doesnt work the way it should as with the other arrays when I have not changed the code structure.
=================Writing to file==================
public static void copy_TimeZonestoFile(ArrayList<AL_TimeZone> timezones, Context context){
try {
FileOutputStream fileOutputStream = context.openFileOutput("TimeZones.dat",Context.MODE_PRIVATE);
OutputStreamWriter writerFile = new OutputStreamWriter(fileOutputStream);
int TZsize = timezones.size();
for (int i = 0; i < TZsize; i++) {
writerFile.write(
timezones.get(i).getRegion() + "," +
timezones.get(i).getOffset() + "\n"
);
}
writerFile.flush();
writerFile.close();
} catch (FileNotFoundException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
} catch (IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
==========Reading from file (nested in thread/runnable combo)===========
public void run() {
if (fileTimeZones.exists()){
System.out.println("Timezone file exists. Loading.. File size is : " + fileTimeZones.length());
try{
savedTimeZoneList.clear();
BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(openFileInput("TimeZones.dat")));
String lineFromTZfile = reader.readLine();
while (lineFromTZfile != null ){
StringTokenizer token = new StringTokenizer(lineFromTZfile,",");
AL_TimeZone timeZone = new AL_TimeZone(token.nextToken(),
token.nextToken());
savedTimeZoneList.add(timeZone);
}
} catch (FileNotFoundException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
} catch (IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
} catch (Exception e){
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
}
===================Trace======================
I/System.out: Timezone file exists. Loading.. File size is : 12373
W/System.err: java.util.NoSuchElementException
at java.util.StringTokenizer.nextToken(StringTokenizer.java:349)
at com.cryptotrac.trackerService$1R_loadTimeZones.run(trackerService.java:215)
W/System.err: at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:764)

It appears that this line of your code is causing the java.util.NoSuchElementException to be thrown.
AL_TimeZone timeZone = new AL_TimeZone(token.nextToken(), token.nextToken());
That probably means that at least one of the lines in file TimeZones.dat does not contain precisely two strings separated by a single comma.
This can be easily checked by making sure that the line that you read from the file is a valid line before you try to parse it.
Using method split, of class java.lang.String, is preferable to using StringTokenizer. Indeed the javadoc of class StringTokenizer states the following.
StringTokenizer is a legacy class that is retained for compatibility reasons although its use is discouraged in new code. It is recommended that anyone seeking this functionality use the split method of String or the java.util.regex package instead.
Try the following.
String lineFromTZfile = reader.readLine();
while (lineFromTZfile != null ){
String[] tokens = lineFromTZfile.split(",");
if (tokens.length == 2) {
// valid line, proceed to handle it
}
else {
// optionally handle an invalid line - maybe write it to the app log
}
lineFromTZfile = reader.readLine(); // Read next line in file.
}

There are probably multiple things wrong, because I'd actually expect you to run into an infinite loop, because you are only reading the first line of the file and then repeatedly parse it.
You should check following things:
Make sure that you are writing the file correctly. What does the written file exactly contain? Are there new lines at the end of each line?
Make sure that the data written (in this case, "region" and "offset") never contain a comma, otherwise parsing will break. I expect that there is a very good chance that "region" contains a comma.
When reading files you always need to assume that the file (format) is broken. For example, assume that readLine will return an empty line or something that contains more or less than one comma.

Editing a file using async threads in Java

I'm a small java developer currently working on a discord bot that I made in Java. one of the features of my bot is to simply have a leveling system whenever anyone sends a message (and other conditions but this is irrelevant for the problem I'm encountering).
Whenever someone sends a message an event is fired and a thread is created to compute how much exp the user should gain. and eventually, the function to edit the storage file is called.
which works fine when called sparsely. but if two threads try to write on the file at once, the file usually gets deleted or truncated. either of these two cases being undesired behavior
I then tried to make a queuing system that worked for over 24h but still failed once so it is more stable in a way. I only know the basics of how threads work so I may've skipped over an important thing that causes the problem
the function looks like this
Thread editingThread = null;
public boolean editThreadStarted = false;
HashMap<String, String> queue = new HashMap<>();
public final boolean editParameter(String key, String value) {
queue.put(key, value);
if(!editThreadStarted) {
editingThread = new Thread(new Runnable() {
#Override
public void run() {
while(queue.keySet().size() > 0) {
String key = (String) queue.keySet().toArray()[0];
String value = queue.get(key);
File inputFile = getFile();
File tempFile = new File(getFile().getName() + ".temp");
try {
tempFile.createNewFile();
} catch (IOException e) {
DemiConsole.error("Failed to create temp file");
handleTrace(e);
continue;
}
//System.out.println("tempFile.isFile = " + tempFile.isFile());
try (BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(inputFile)); BufferedWriter writer = new BufferedWriter(new FileWriter(tempFile))){
String currentLine;
while((currentLine = reader.readLine()) != null) {
String trimmedLine = currentLine.trim();
if(trimmedLine.startsWith(key)) {
writer.write(key + ":" + value + System.getProperty("line.separator"));
continue;
}
writer.write(currentLine + System.getProperty("line.separator"));
}
writer.close();
reader.close();
inputFile.delete();
tempFile.renameTo(inputFile);
} catch (IOException e) {
DemiConsole.error("Caught an IO exception while attempting to edit parameter ("+key+") in file ("+getFile().getName()+"), returning false");
handleTrace(e);
continue;
}
queue.remove(key);
}
editThreadStarted = false;
}
});
editThreadStarted = true;
editingThread.start();
}
return true;
}
getFile() returns the file the function is meant to write to
the file format is
memberid1:expamount
memberid2:expamount
memberid3:expamount
memberid4:expamount
the way the editing works is by creating a temporary file to which i will write all of the original file's data line by line, checking if the memberid matches with what i want to edit, if it does, then instead of writing the original file's line, i will write the new edited line with the new expamount instead, before continuing on with the rest of the lines. Once that is done, the original file is deleted and the temporary file is renamed to the original file, replacing it.
This function will always be called asynchronously so making the whole thing synchronous is not an option.
Thanks in advance
Edit(1) :
I've been suggested to use semaphores and after digging a little into it (i never heard of semaphores before) it seems to be a really good option and would remove the need for a queue, simply aquire in the beginning and release at the end, nothing more required!

I ended up using semaphores as per user207421's suggestions and it seems to work perfectly
I simply put delays between each line write to artificially make the task longer and make it easier to have multiple threads trying to write at once, and they all wait for their turns!
Thanks

Saving data to a file doesn't behave as expected

I have a simple project where I created a Store with customers, products and employees. Each is represented by a Class of course and I also have a CSV file for each one of them to be able to load data from and save data to it.
I'm facing issues where the file reading/writing is working, but not really. For example, I have the ability to save each file individually so if for instance I want to create a new customer, I'd save it to the list and then to the file. Issue is, once I do it for another Class (i.e if I create a new employee) and then save it again, the customer file object I saw in the CSV earlier is deleted. BUT, once I add a new object again, that same object reappears again. Hope you can somehow understand, but here is a more detailed view:
customer.csv is empty:
Me creating a new customer:
Created and saved to CSV:
Now, if I go to the other menu, and click on "Save all data" that jon snow customer object will be gone. Then if I create a new customer, then it will be added to the CSV file, along with the jon snow I added earlier. So why is it gone in the first place?
So here is the whole file reader/writer code I'm using:
import java.io.BufferedWriter;
import java.io.File;
import java.io.FileNotFoundException;
import java.io.FileWriter;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.util.List;
import java.util.Scanner;
class CSV {
static void CreateFile(String filename) { //Create new file
try {
File fileToCreate = new File(filename);
if (fileToCreate.createNewFile()) {
System.out.println("File created sucessfully: " + fileToCreate.getName());
}
} catch (IOException e) {
System.out.println("Cannot create file!");
}
}
static void ReadFile(String path_and_filename){
try {
File fileToRead = new File(path_and_filename);
Scanner myReader = new Scanner(fileToRead);
System.out.println("Reading file "+path_and_filename+" :");
while (myReader.hasNextLine()) {
String data = myReader.nextLine();
System.out.println(data);
}
myReader.close();
System.out.println();
} catch (FileNotFoundException e) {
System.out.println("There is no such file "+"\"path_and_filename\""+".\n");
}
}
// The StringBuilder in Java represents a mutable sequence of characters.
// Java's built in String class is not mutable.
static void saveArrayListToFile(List<Output> listToSave, String fileName, String sep) throws Exception {
StringBuilder ans = new StringBuilder();
for (Output record : listToSave) {
ans.append(record.createOutput());
ans.append(sep);
}
saveStringToFile(ans.toString(), fileName);
System.out.println("\nData saved to "+ fileName);
}
static void saveArrayListToFile1(ArrayList<String> listToSave, String fileName, String sep){
StringBuilder ans = new StringBuilder();
for (Object record : listToSave) {
ans.append(record.toString());
ans.append(sep);
}
saveStringToFile(ans.toString(), fileName);
System.out.println("\nList was saved to file "+fileName+"\n");
}
static void saveStringToFile(String data, String fileName){
BufferedWriter bufferedWriter=null;
try {
bufferedWriter = new BufferedWriter(
new FileWriter(fileName,false));
bufferedWriter.write(data);
} catch (IOException e) {
System.out.println("Cannot write to file");
} finally {
try {
bufferedWriter.close();
} catch (IOException e) {
System.out.println("Cannot write to file");
}
}
}
}
When I'm creating a new customer, I call it from a menu and it looks like this:
switch (selection) {
case 1:
try {
System.out.println("You're registering as a new customer");
String custID = ObjectIDs.generateID();
System.out.println("Enter first name:");
String firstName = sc.next();
System.out.println("Enter last name:");
String lastName = sc.next();
st.newCustomer(custID, firstName, lastName);
st.saveCustomersList();
} catch (Exception e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
break;
the saveCustomerList() function is this:
#SuppressWarnings("unchecked")
void saveCustomersList() throws Exception {
CSV.saveArrayListToFile((List<Output>)(List<?>) customers, CUSTOMERS_FILE_PATH,"\n");
}
And then the functions calls saveArrayListToFile() to save it.
The behavior is the same with Product and Employee projects, so I randomly chose to show how it acts when creating a new Product.
I hope I added enough information. If needed, I can paste more code in but I already feel it's very cluttered. Hopefully it's ok.
Thank you very much :)

At the moment it's hard to say, as one can only hypothesise as to what happens when you click on "Save all data". There are some weird things (what is saveArrayListToFile and saveArrayListToFile11? Why does one declare an exception? When are these called?).
Having said that, look at the actual file writing method saveStringToFile, it says:
bufferedWriter = new BufferedWriter(new FileWriter(fileName,false));
This false there means 'do not append to file, rewrite it from scratch'. So each time you call it, file contents are discarded and replaced from what you provide to the method call. So my somewhat educated guess would be:
You save customer one to file (gets cleared, customer 1 written) and
append the customer to a list of customers (that's my guess)
You
save customer two to file (file gets cleared, so only customer 2 is
saved), you add to list to customers (do you?)
Then you choose 'save all' which gets list of customers, and save them in one go, a single call to the method. The file is cleared, all customers are saved.
But it's all guessing. Try creating a minimal, reproducible example

In addition to pafau k. I would like to add some things at least I would do differently...
First of all:
Things that can cause errors or unexpected behaviour:
Everything below is in saveStringToFile
Like already pointed out the Initialisation of the BufferedWriter: It should be initialized like this:
bufferedWriter = new BufferedWriter(new FileWriter(filename, true));
This puts the File into appending mode (if you want to append to a file you can also get rid of the boolean (second argument) entirely because appending is standard: new FileWriter(filename))
If for some case the Creation of the BufferedWriter failed you will still have a null-pointing object as bufferedWriter. This however means that you will be surprised with a NullPointerException in your finally block. To prevent this first of all do a check in your finally block:
if (bufferedWriter != null) {
// Close your bufferedWriter in here
}
Also, if you run into an error you will likely be presented with the same error message twice.
Now cosmetics:
Things that I would write differently for aesthetic reasons:
Java methods (and static "methods") are always starting with a small letter :)
This means it should be public static void createFile() for example or static void readFile()
variables and parameters of methods do not contain seperators like _ but instead if you want to make it more readable you start with a small letter and for each seperation you use a capital letter for that: e.g. String thisIsAVeryLongVariableWithALotOfSeperations = "Foo";
The generic types in saveArrayListToFile1() work like a placeholder. So you declare ArrayList<String> listToSave so you don't need a cast in the following for-loop: You can simply write:
for (String record : listToSave) {
ans.append(record);
ans.append(sep);
}
I hope this fixes all errors or complications. :)

How can I plus file's info?

I'm making a new game and I wanna make a coins collector to, later, buy things with those coins. I'm using eclipse.
void save() {
try {
PrintWriter out = new PrintWriter("coins.txt");
out.write(Integer.toString(nmonedas));
out.close();
} catch (FileNotFoundException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
void load() {
StringBuffer texto=new StringBuffer();
try {
int c;
#SuppressWarnings("resource")
FileReader entrada=new FileReader("coins.txt");
while((c=entrada.read())!=-1){
texto.append((char)c);
}
}
catch (IOException ex) {}
labelshow.setText(texto.toString());
}
I have this code but i cant plus the info. NEED HELP PLS
Well, the thing is, I'm doing a game in eclipse and I want you to collect coins and keep them in a file.
They are collected perfectly and stored in the file, but when I start the game again I want them to be collected but they add up with the previous ones

I assume you are referring to appending text to a .TXT file. If so, you can use something like this:
Files.write(Paths.get("Path to text file here"), "Content".getBytes(), StandardOpenOption.APPEND);
I would put the above in a TRY CATCH block. Also look into PrintWriter as this may be more appopriate to what you need it for as it allows you to continuously write to the file.

Append to a certain part of a text file in Java

I have an assignment where I have created a program to sell and order electronic devices and update two text files whenever a new sale/order has been made.
I found a way to update the text file instead of overwriting it so any old orders/sales are not lost and the new ones are added to the end of the file, but my assignment requires me to have the text file in the following form:
SALES
{
SALE
{
(Sale info here)
}
SALE
{
(Another sale info here)
}
}
The SALES { } needs to appear once in the whole file, and I need to update the file with each SALE { }. Can I make it so that
the writer writes only after SALES } (therefore in the 3rd line) and before } (so in the second to last line), even after restarting the application?
This is part of the code of my writer:
File file1= null;
BufferedWriter writer=null;
try {
file1=new File(path);
}
catch (NullPointerException e) {
System.err.println ("Not Found.");
}
try {
writer=new BufferedWriter(new OutputStreamWriter(new FileOutputStream(file1, true)));
}
catch (FileNotFoundException e) {
System.err.println("Error opening file for writing.");
}
try
{
writer.write("SALES " + "\n" + "{");
//Writer writes sale info here
writer.write("\n" + "}");
}
catch (IOException e) {
System.err.println("Write error!");
}
Basically as of now, it creates SALES{ } every time I run the program, which is something I don't want.
Another way I thought of doing this is basically start the file with the following:
SALES
{
}
and just overwrite the last line with every new order, and at the end of each execution I will add another } in the end which will close the upper SALES {. But I also do not know how to do that.
Sorry if this sounds very amateurish. Thank you for any answers beforehand.

One way you can give a try is by checking whether "SALES
{" string is present in your file. If present you may directly write sales info else write the entire file.
You can include following snippet in your code to scan the file line by line as follows:
Scanner scanner = new Scanner(file1);
while(scanner.hasNextLine()){
if("SALES{".equals(scanner.nextLine().trim())){
//Writer writes sale info here
break;
}else{
writer.write("SALES " + "\n" + "{");
//Writer writes sale info here
writer.write("\n" + "}");
}
}

First of all, use this as a line separator:
String lineSeparator = System.getProperty("line.separator");
Why? diferent systems use diferent ways to separate the lines ( \n < linux, \r\n < windows, \r < mac).
In your code you will change de +"\n"+ to + lineSeparator + .
The best way to write this is to use a collection (array) of Sale Objects and then you will interate through this collection, like:
for(Sale sale : sales){
sale.getters // Infos
//write +\t+ (tab) and save infos
}
and then finish with "+}+"
For me its better to always create a new file in this case.