I wanted to know if there is any method in java to access the contents of the file in the computer.
For example if I want to make a word guessing game in which I want to access the words kept in a file randomly.
(I heard of something called "FileReader" but can't understand how to use it.)
Hope you understand what I mean.
Thanks!!
You can also read an entire text file as a List with Files.readAllLines . You can do it like this (read and print):
List<String> sl= Files.readAllLines(Paths.get("test1.txt"));
for (String s:sl) {
System.out.println(s);
}
Another option is to use Files.newBufferedReader like this:
try (BufferedReader br= Files.newBufferedReader(Paths.get("test1.txt")))
{
String line;
while ((line=br.readLine())!=null) System.out.println(line);
}
The try(){ } construct is called try-with-resorces, it closes the open file object (br in this case) automatically when finished. It is vital for writing, and is a good coding practice for reading.
You can read contents of File like this.
public void readFile(String fileName){ //Pass file's absolute path
BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(fileName));
String line = null;
while((line=reader.readLine())!=null){
System.out.println(line);
}
}
Related
I found this code from another question
private void updateLine(String toUpdate, String updated) throws IOException {
BufferedReader file = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(data));
String line;
String input = "";
while ((line = file.readLine()) != null)
input += line + "\n";
input = input.replace(toUpdate, updated);
FileOutputStream os = new FileOutputStream(data);
os.write(input.getBytes());
file.close();
os.close();
}
This is my file before I replace some lines
example1
example2
example3
But when I replace a line, the file now looks like this
example1example2example3
Which makes it impossible to read the file when there are a lot of lines in it.
How would I go about editing the code above to make my file look what it looked like at the start?
Use System.lineSeparator() instead of \n.
while ((line = file.readLine()) != null)
input += line + System.lineSeparator();
The issue is that on Unix systems, the line separator is \n while on Windows systems, it's \r\n.
In Java versions older then Java 7, you would have to use System.getProperty("line.separator") instead.
As pointed out in the comments, if you have concerns about memory usage, it would be wise to not store the entire output in a variable, but write it out line-by-line in the loop that you're using to process the input.
If you read and modify line by line this has the advantage, that you dont need to fit the whole file in memory. Not sure if this is possible in your case, but it is generally a good thing to aim for streaming. In your case this would in addition remove the need for concatenate the string and you don't need to select a line terminator, because you can write each single transformed line with println(). It requires to write to a different file, which is generally a good thing as it is crash safe. You would lose data if you rewrite a file and get aborted.
private void updateLine(String toUpdate, String updated) throws IOException {
BufferedReader file = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(data));
PrintWriter writer = new PrintWriter(new File(data+".out"), "UTF-8");
String line;
while ((line = file.readLine()) != null)
{
line = line.replace(toUpdate, updated);
writer.println(line);
}
file.close();
if (writer.checkError())
throw new IOException("cannot write");
writer.close();
}
In this case, it assumes that you need to do the replace only on complete lines, not multiple lines. I also added an explicit encoding and use a writer, as you have a string to output.
This is because you use OutputStream which is better for handling binary data. Try using PrintWriter and don't add any line terminator at the end of the lines. Example is here
I'm trying to write a program that reads a file (which is a Java source file), makes an Arraylist of certain specified values from that file. and outputs that Arraylist into another resulting file.
I'm using PrintWriter to make the new resulting file. This is a summarised version of my program:
ArrayList<String> exampleArrayList = new ArrayList<String>();
File actualInputFile = new File("C:/Desktop/example.java");
PrintWriter resultingSpreadsheet= new PrintWriter("C:/Desktop/SpreadsheetValues.txt", "UTF-8");
FileReader fr = new FileReader(actualInputFile);
BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(fr);
String line=null;
while ((line = br.readLine()) != null) {
// code that makes ArrayList
}
for (int i = 0; i < exampleArrayList.size(); i++) {
resultingSpreadsheet.println(exampleArrayList.get(i));
}
resultingSpreadsheet.close();
The problem is that when i run this, nothing gets printed to the resultingSpreadsheet. It's completely empty.
BUT, this program works perfectly (meaning that it prints out everything correctly to the resultingSpreadsheet file) when I replace:
File actualInputFile = new File("C:/Desktop/example.java");
which is the file that I want as my input file, and which has a size of 481 KB,
with:
File smallerInputFile = new File("C:/Desktop/smallerExample.txt");
which is really just a smaller .txt example version of the .java source file, and it has a size of 1.08 KB.
I've tried a few things including flushing the PrintWriter, wrapping it around FileWriter, copy-pasting all the code from the .java file into a text file in case it was an extension problem, but these don't seem to work.
I'm starting to think it must be because of the size of the file that the PrintWriter makes, but it's very possible that that's not the problem. Perhaps I need to put everything in a stream (like it says here: http://docs.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/io/PrintWriter.html)? If so, how would I do that?
Why is reading the bigger actualInputFile and outputting its data correctly such a problem, when everything works fine for the smallerInputFile?
Can anyone help with this?
Check for exceptions while writing to the the excel sheet , because i really don't think its a problem of size. Below is the sample code that is executing successfully and the file size was approx 1 MB.
public class Test {
/**
* #param args
*/
public static void main(String[] args) {
BufferedReader br = null;
try {
String sCurrentLine;
br = new BufferedReader(new FileReader("D:\\AdminController.java"));
while ((sCurrentLine = br.readLine()) != null) {
System.out.println(sCurrentLine);
}
} catch (IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
} finally {
try {
if (br != null)br.close();
} catch (IOException ex) {
ex.printStackTrace();
}
}
}
}
This should go as a comment, but I do not have the rep. In the documentation it has both write methods and print methods. Have you tried using write() instead?
I doubt it's the size of the file, it may be between the two files you are testing one is .txt, and the other is .java
EDIT: Probably second suggestion of the two. First is just something I noticed with the docs.
The methods of PrintWriter do not throw Exception. Call the checkError() method which would flush the stream as well as return true if an error occurred. It is quite possible that an error occurred processing the larger file, an encoding error for instance.
Check your program. When the file is empty it means that your program doesn't close the PrintWriter before finishing the program.
For example you may have a return in a part of your program which cause that resultingSpreadsheet.close(); have not being run.
I wrote some code to read in a text file and to return an array with each line stored in an element. I can't for the life of me work out why this isn't working...can anyone have a quick look? The output from the System.out.println(line); is null so I'm guessing there's a problem reading the line in, but I can't see why. Btw, the file i'm passing to it definitely has something in it!
public InOutSys(String filename) {
try {
file = new File(filename);
br = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(file));
bw = new BufferedWriter(new FileWriter(file));
} catch (Exception e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
public String[] readFile() {
ArrayList<String> dataList = new ArrayList<String>(); // use ArrayList because it can expand automatically
try {
String line;
// Read in lines of the document until you read a null line
do {
line = br.readLine();
System.out.println(line);
dataList.add(line);
} while (line != null && !line.isEmpty());
br.close();
} catch (Exception e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
// Convert the ArrayList into an Array
String[] dataArr = new String[dataList.size()];
dataArr = dataList.toArray(dataArr);
// Test
for (String s : dataArr)
System.out.println(s);
return dataArr; // Returns an array containing the separate lines of the
// file
}
First, you open a FileWriter once after opening a FileReader using new FileWriter(file), which open a file in create mode. So it will be an empty file after you run your program.
Second, is there an empty line in your file? if so, !line.isEmpty() will terminate your do-while-loop.
You're using a FileWriter to the file you're reading, so the FileWriter clears the content of the file. Don't read and write to the same file concurrently.
Also:
don't assume a file contains a line. You shouldn't use a do/while loop, but rather a while loop;
always close steams, readers and writers in a finally block;
catch(Exception) is a bad practice. Only catch the exceptions you want, and can handle. Else, let them go up the stack.
I'm not sure if you're looking for a way to improve your provided code or just for a solution for "Reading in text file in Java" as the title said, but if you're looking for a solution I'd recommend using apache commons io to do it for you. The readLines method from FileUtils will do exactly what you want.
If you're looking to learn from a good example, FileUtils is open source, so you can take a look at how they chose to implement it by looking at the source.
There are several possible causes for your problem:
The file path is incorrect
You shouldn't try to read/write the same file at the same time
It's not such a good idea to initialize the buffers in the constructor, think of it - some method might close the buffer making it invalid for subsequent calls of that or other methods
The loop condition is incorrect
Better try this approach for reading:
try {
String line = null;
BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(file));
while ((line = br.readLine()) != null) {
System.out.println(line);
dataList.add(line);
}
} finally {
if (br != null)
br.close();
}
I have a text file placed in assets and I want to read one line of it at a time. My problem is that I do not know how to access the file in Activity, and then once I access it, how would I go about only selecting one line?
If keeping the txt file in assets is a bad idea, where should I put it for easier access?
I really appreciate any help!
This is a snippet I use to prepopulate tables in my RSS feed reader. You can use it as a track for your needs.
In res/raw/ I have file feeds.txt. The file is referenced is code like R.raw.feeds.
final Resources resources = mHelperContext.getResources();
InputStream inputStream = resources.openRawResource(R.raw.feeds);
BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(inputStream), 8192);
try {
String line;
while ((line = reader.readLine()) != null) {
//make the use you want with "line"
}
} catch (IOException e) {
Log.e(TAG, "Error loading sample feeds.");
throw new RuntimeException(e);
}
To open assests, you'll need to call
<context>.getAssets().open(<your file>);
<context> is your activity, so if this is in your onCreate, then it would be this. That call returns an inputstream, which you can then handle however you please.
I don't see how it would be a particularly bad idea to keep your text file there, depends on what you're using that text file for.
Try this:
Make a new method for example readMyFile().
It must looks like this:
private String readMyFile(File file) throws IOException {
BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(file));
StringBuilder txt = new StringBuilder();
String line;
while ((line = reader.readLine()) != null) {
txt.append(line);
txt.append("\n");
}
reader.close();
return txt.toString();
Paste it to your code, and use the method (readMyFile([the file what you want to read in assets]).
Hope it helps.
I want to read a file in java. And then, I want to delete a line from that file without the file being re-written.
How can I do this?
Someone suggested me to read/write to a file without the file being re-written with the help of RandomAccessFile. How to write data to a file through java?
Specifically, that files contains lines. One line contains three field - id, name and profession - separated by \t. I want to read that file through a Reader or InputStream or any other way and then search for a line that has the specified keyword (say 121) and then wants to delete that whole line.
This operation needs to be performed without the whole file being re-written
I don't think you can alter a file on a filesystem in any way without writing to it, including deleting a line.
Do you mean you want to write the file without altering the file's metadata, like the last modified time?
Based on your updated question:
I don't think you can do what you're asking to do here. You can't remove bytes from a file once the file has been written, note no deleteByte or removeByte methods in RandomAccessFile.
I suggest moving the content of your file to a database - that allows this kind of record-oriented operation.
The alternative is, you have to rewrite the file. Sorry!
"Lines" are an abstract concept -- they're just an arbitrary sequence of bytes terminated by "\n". BufferedWriters and their ilk don't support textual editing in this way, so you'll have to rewrite the file in its entirety.
In general, what you want to do is:
open a reader
read content into some suitable data structure
close the reader
change data/records which need to be changed in this data structure
open a FileWriter with append == false
write content of data structure to resulting file
close FileWriter
add a marker in your lines saying if your line is deleted or not : this will make a software delete instead od a hardware delete.
if you have to insert new lines, you then can reuse those that are marked as deleted.
The below code searchs the line or fields in a single text file reads the file line by line
then the line or fields can be replaced by " " or any other string. Here we use the pattern and Matcher classes.
If this not clearing your question do let me know.
import java.io.;
import java.util.regex.;
import java.util.Properties;
public class DeleteLine
{
public static void main(String[] args)
{
BufferedReader br = null;
try
{
String line=null;
File f = new File("d:/xyz.txt");
String replaceString=properties.getProperty("replaceAll.String");
;
br = new BufferedReader(new FileReader("d:/giri/scjp/");
while ( (line = br.readLine()) != null )//BufferedReader contains readline method
{
Pattern p=Pattern.compile(searchString);/*here u an specify the line u want to delete */
Matcher m=p.matcher(line);
line=m.replaceAll(replaceString);/*here replace String u can " " so that it will be emptied */
System.out.println(line);
}
//System.out.println(line);
}
}
}
br = new BufferedReader(new FileReader("d:/xyz.txt"));
String line = null;
}
catch (FileNotFoundException e)
{
System.out.println("File couldnt find");
e.printStackTrace();
}
catch (IOException e)
{
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
}