Develop Reference

Writing to an External File on Android --- File Doesn't Register, But Java Can Read

I'm trying to write to an external txt (or csv) file for Android. I can run an app, close it, and run it again, and readData() will read back to my log what I've stored. However, the dirFile (file directory) appears nowhere within my Android files (even if I connect it to a computer and search).
Something interesting, though: if I clear my log (similar to a list of print statements shown within Eclipse) and disconnect my phone from my computer, then reconnect it, the log reappears with everything I've ever written to my file (even if I later overwrote it)...yet the app isn't even running!
Here is my code. Please help me understand why I cannot find my file!
(Note: I've tried appending a "myFile.txt" extension to the directory, but it just causes an EISDIR exception.)
public void writeData(String dirName){
try
{
File root = new File(getExternalFilesDir(null), dirName);
// Writes to file
//
// The "true" argument allows the file to be appended. Without this argument (just root),
// the file will be overwritten (even though we later call append) rather than appended to.
FileWriter writer = new FileWriter(root, true);
writer.append("Append This Text\n");
writer.flush();
writer.close();
// Checks if we actually wrote to file by reading it back in (appears in Log)
//readData(dirName);
}
catch(Exception e)
{
Log.v("2222", "2222 ERROR: " + e.getMessage());
}
}
If you're interested, here's the function I wrote to read in the data:
public void readData(String dirName){
try
{
File root = new File(getExternalFilesDir(null), dirName);
// Checks to see if we are actually writing to file by reading in the file
BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(root));
try {
String s = reader.readLine();
while (s != null) {
Log.v("2222", "2222 READ: " + s);
s = reader.readLine();
}
}
catch(Exception e) {
Log.v("2222", "2222 ERROR: " + e.getMessage());
}
finally {
reader.close();
}
}
catch(Exception e) {
Log.v("2222", "2222 ERROR: " + e.getMessage());
}
}
Thanks!

even if I connect it to a computer and search
if I clear my log (similar to a list of print statements shown within Eclipse) and disconnect my phone from my computer, then reconnect it, the log reappears with everything I've ever written to my file (even if I later overwrote it).
What you are seeing on your computer is what is indexed by MediaStore, and possibly a subset of those, depending upon whether your computer caches information it gets from the device in terms of "directory" contents.
To help ensure that MediaStore indexes your file promptly:
Use a FileOutputStream (optionally wrapped in an OutputStreamWriter), not a FileWriter
Call flush(), getFD().sync(), and close() on the FileOutputStream, instead of calling flush() and close() on the FileWriter (sync() will ensure the bytes are written to disk before continuing)
Use MediaScannerConnection and scanFile() to tell MediaStore to index your file
You can then use whatever sort of "reload" or "refresh" or whatever option is in your desktop OS's file manager, and your file should show up.
This blog post has more on all of this.

public void create(){
folder = new File(Environment.getExternalStoragePublicDirectory(Environment.DIRECTORY_MOVIES),"video");
boolean success = true;
if (!folder.exists()) {
success=folder.mkdirs();
}
if (success) {
readfile();
} else {
System.out.println("failed");
}
}
The above code will be used to crete the directory in th emobile at desired path
private void readfile() {
// TODO Auto-generated method stub
AssetManager assetManager = getResources().getAssets();
String[] files = null;
try {
files = assetManager.list("clipart");
} catch (Exception e) {
Log.e("read clipart ERROR", e.toString());
e.printStackTrace();
}
for(String filename : files) {
System.out.println("File name => "+filename);
InputStream in = null;
OutputStream out = null;
try {
in = assetManager.open("clipart/" + filename);
out = new FileOutputStream(folder + "/" + filename);
copyFile(in, out);
in.close();
in = null;
out.flush();
out.close();
out = null;
} catch(Exception e) {
Log.e("copy clipart ERROR", e.toString());
e.printStackTrace();
}
}}private void copyFile(InputStream in, OutputStream out) throws IOException {
byte[] buffer = new byte[1024];
int read;
while((read = in.read(buffer)) != -1){
out.write(buffer, 0, read);
}}
this is my code used to write file in internal memory from the assets folder in project. This code can read all type(extension) of file from asset folder to mobile.
Don't forget to add permission in manifest file
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE" />
and call the above function by
readfile();//this call the function to read and write the file
I hope this may help you.
Thank you.

Files deleting issue

I have this code, which must remove files from the directory and the directory itself:
private static void removeTempFiles(File dir){
if(!dir.exists())
return;
if(dir.isDirectory()){
for(File f : dir.listFiles())
removeTempFiles(f);
dir.delete();
}
else {
dir.delete();
}
}
but executing this code don't remove all the files. From time to time it removes all files with the folder or removes only a few files
UPD:
here is my creating file code:
File tempFolder = new File(tempPath);
tempFolder.mkdir();
tempFolder.mkdirs();
FileOutputStream fileOut = new FileOutputStream(tempPath+"/"+fileName);
OutputStreamWriter osw = new OutputStreamWriter(fileOut, "windows-1251");
try{
osw.write(file64);
} catch (IOException e){
e.printStackTrace();
}finally {
osw.close();
fileOut.close();
}

On Windows, it's normal that file deletion does not always succeed, because files can be locked by various services running on the system (antivirus, search indexing etc.). You need to add a retry loop around every file deletion call.

Java File.delete() does not delete all files

I have the following Java code which iterates through all the files in a directory and deletes them.
for(File file : tmpDir.listFiles())
{
file.delete();
}
It does however not delete all files. Some, usually 20-30, out of a couple of thousand, are left behind when I do this. Is it possible to fix this, or have I stumbled upon some Java voodoo that is best left alone?

It returns a boolean value, you should check that. From the JavaDoc:
Returns:
true if and only if the file or directory is successfully deleted; false otherwise
You should check the value of the return and take action.
If it returns false it may well be that you do not have permission to delete the file.
In that case you can check whether the file is writeable by the application and if not attempt to make it writeable - again this returns a boolean. If successful you can try deleting again.
You could use a utility method:
private void deleteFile(final File f) throws IOException {
if (f.delete()) {
return;
}
if (!f.canWrite() && !f.setWritable(true)) {
throw new IOException("No write permissions on file '" + f + "' and cannot set writeable.");
}
if (!f.delete()) {
throw new IOException("Failed to delete file '" + f + "' even after setting writeable; file may be locked.");
}
}
I would also take their advice in the JavaDoc:
Note that the Files class defines the delete method to throw an
IOException when a file cannot be deleted. This is useful for error
reporting and to diagnose why a file cannot be deleted.
Provided that you are using Java 7 that is. That method throws a number of exceptions that you can handle:
try {
Files.delete(path);
} catch (NoSuchFileException x) {
System.err.format("%s: no such" + " file or directory%n", path);
} catch (DirectoryNotEmptyException x) {
System.err.format("%s not empty%n", path);
} catch (IOException x) {
// File permission problems are caught here.
System.err.println(x);
}
Example taken from the Oracle tutorial page.

Forcing the garbage collector to run using System.gc(); made all the files deletable.

Make sure that you don't have any open stream like BufferedReader/Writer, FileReader/Writer etc. First close them, then you should be able to delete the file.
One more point, E.g. if you open a BufferedReader via another reader like FileReader, you must close both of the readers seperately.
So instead of this:
BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(new File(filePath)););
do this:
BufferedReader bufferedReader = null;
FileReader fileReader = null;
try{
fileReader = new FileReader(readFile);
bufferedReader = new BufferedReader(fileReader);
}catch{...}
...
try {
fileReader.close();
bufferedReader .close();
readFile.delete();
} catch (IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}

How to prevent InputStream.readObject() from throwing EOFException?

I serialize an object and save it as a file on my HDD. When I'm reading it, in only some occasions it throws EOFException. After couple of hours debugging I am not able to find a problem.
Here is my code:
public void serialize(MyClass myClass,String path) {
FileOutputStream foStream = null;
ObjectOutputStream ooStream = null;
try {
File file = new File(path);
if (!file.exists()) {
file.createNewFile();
}
foStream = new FileOutputStream(file);
ooStream = new ObjectOutputStream(foStream);
ooStream.writeObject(myClass);
} catch (Throwable t) {
log.error(t);
} finally {
if (ooStream != null) {
try {
ooStream.flush();
ooStream.close();
} catch (IOException e) {
log.error(e);
}
}
}
}
For getting Object:
public MyClass deSerialize(String path) {
MyClass myClass=null;
FileInputStream fiStream = null;
ObjectInputStream oiStream = null;
String errorMessage = "";
try {
File file = new File(path);
if (!file.exists()) {
return null;
}
fiStream = new FileInputStream(path);
oiStream = new ObjectInputStream(fiStream);
Object o = oiStream.readObject();
myClass = (MyClass) o;
} catch (Throwable t) {
log.warn(t);
} finally {
if (oiStream != null) {
try {
oiStream.close();
} catch (IOException e) {
log.error(e);
}
}
}
return myClass;
}
Stacktrace:
java.io.EOFException at
java.io.ObjectInputStream$BlockDataInputStream.peekByte(ObjectInputStream.java:2498)
at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readObject0(ObjectInputStream.java:1273)
at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readObject(ObjectInputStream.java:348)
at java.util.LinkedList.readObject(LinkedList.java:776) at
sun.reflect.GeneratedMethodAccessor583.invoke(Unknown Source) at
sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)
at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:585) at
java.io.ObjectStreamClass.invokeReadObject(ObjectStreamClass.java:946)
at
java.io.ObjectInputStream.readSerialData(ObjectInputStream.java:1809)
at
java.io.ObjectInputStream.readOrdinaryObject(ObjectInputStream.java:1719)
at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readObject0(ObjectInputStream.java:1305)
at
java.io.ObjectInputStream.defaultReadFields(ObjectInputStream.java:1908)
at
java.io.ObjectInputStream.readSerialData(ObjectInputStream.java:1832)
at
java.io.ObjectInputStream.readOrdinaryObject(ObjectInputStream.java:1719)
at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readObject0(ObjectInputStream.java:1305)
at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readObject(ObjectInputStream.java:348)
Question:
My serialized object is now corrupted and then is it rubbish now?
Because this object is responsible for rendering the UI which saved by user. If User logs in it should render previously saved state of UI. However for some user the file cannot be deserialized.

EOFException means you are trying to read past the end of the file. Normally you don't have any way of knowing whethere there are more objects to read, other than trying it, so you shouldn't regard EOFException as a problem in the first place. If it is thrown in a situation where you think you know there are more objects in the file, e.g. when you have prefixed an object count to the file, it indicates a problem with the code that wrote the file, or possible corruption of the file itself. Another example is a zero length file that shouldn't be zero length. Whatever the problem is, it can't be solved by the reading end, it is already too late.

I cannot see any problem with the writing and reading of the file.
So my best guess is that the problem is at the file level. For example:
you could be writing one file and reading a different one, or
you could be reading the file before the file write completes, or
something else could be clobbering the file in between the running of your write code and read code.
I suggest that you add some tracing code that uses File.length() to find out what the file size is after you've written it and before you read it.
A couple of other possibilities:
the writer and reader code is using different versions of MyClass (or a dependent class) with incompatible representations and the same serialVersionId values, or
you could be using custom readObject and writeObject methods that are incompatible.

In my case, EOF Exception was solved by ensuring the read and writes to the file were thread safe. Like Stephen C answered above, if you try to write to a file which you also are trying to read from say from another thread, you may be stepping on the ObjectInputStream which is going to throw EOF Exception in this case.

how can you delete a sound file in java?

I have a sound file that's recorded in my Java code and I need some code to delete it.

What is so special about sound file??!!!
You can use this code.
public static void deleteFile(String file){
File myFile = new File(file);
if (!myFile.delete()){
System.out.println("Deletion was not sucessful");
}else{
System.out.println("File deleted");
}
}

Since the answer is so obvious (file.delete()), I suspect that you're actually having issues with deleting it. I.e, file.delete() has returned false and the file is in reality not been deleted from the disk file system.
In that case, you can not delete it when you still have pointers open on that file. For example, when you have a InputStream or OutputStream on the file in your Java code, then you will not be able to delete the file as long as you do not call close() on the streams.
So, to fix that issue, you need to ensure that you call close() on any InputStream and OutputStream in the finally block of the try block where you're using the streams.
E.g.
File file = new File(name);
OutputStream output = null;
try {
output = new FileOutputStream(file);
// Write to output here ...
file.delete(); // Will always fail because output is not closed.
} finally {
if (output != null) try { output.close(); } catch (IOException logOrIgnore) {}
}
file.delete(); // Will succeed after close of output.