Related
I am trying to allow a user to download a file (attachment) using Java to serve up the download. I have been partially successful. The file is read, and on the client side there is a prompt for a download. A file is saved successfully, but it has 0 bytes. Here is my server side code:
String stored = "/var/lib/tomcat/webapps/myapp/attachments/" + request.getParameter("stored");
String realname = request.getParameter("realname");
// Open the input and output streams
FileInputStream attachmentFis = new FileInputStream(stored);
FileOutputStream attachmentFos = new FileOutputStream(realname);
try {
// Send the file
byte[] attachmentBuffer = new byte[1024];
int count = 0;
while((count = attachmentFis.read(attachmentBuffer)) != -1) {
attachmentFos.write(attachmentBuffer, 0, count);
}
} catch (IOException e) {
// Exception handling
} finally {
// Close the streams
attachmentFos.flush();
attachmentFos.close();
attachmentFis.close();
}
For context, this is in a servlet. The files have an obfuscated name, which is passed as "stored" here. The actual file name, the name the user will see, is "realname".
What do I need to do to get the actual file to arrive at the client end?
EDIT
Following suggestions in the comments, I changed the write to include the 0, count parameters and put the close stuff in a finally block. However, I am still getting a 0 byte file when I attempt a download.
EDIT 2
Thanks to the logging suggestion from Dave the Dane, I discovered the file was being written locally. A bit of digging and I found I needed to use response.getOutputStream().write instead of a regular FileOutputStream. I have been successful in getting a file to download through this method. Thank you all for your helpful suggestions.
As others have observed, you'd be better off using try-with-resources & let that handle the closing.
Assuming you have some Logging Framework available, maybe the following would cast light on the matter...
try {
LOG.info ("Requesting....");
final String stored = "/var/lib/tomcat/webapps/myapp/attachments/" + request.getParameter("stored");
LOG.info ("stored.......: {}", stored);
final String realname = request.getParameter("realname");
LOG.info ("realname.....: {}", realname);
final File fileStored = new File(stored);
LOG.info ("fileStored...: {}", fileStored .getCanonicalPath());
final File fileRealname = new File(realname);
LOG.info ("fileRealname.: {}", fileRealname.getCanonicalPath());
try(final InputStream attachmentFis = new FileInputStream (fileStored);
final OutputStream attachmentFos = new FileOutputStream(fileRealname))
{
final byte[] attachmentBuffer = new byte[64 * 1024];
int count;
while((count = attachmentFis.read (attachmentBuffer)) != -1) {
; attachmentFos.write(attachmentBuffer, 0, count);
LOG.info ("Written......: {} bytes to {}", count, realname);
}
attachmentFos.flush(); // Probably done automatically in .close()
}
LOG.info ("Done.");
}
catch (final Exception e) {
LOG.error("Problem!.....: {}", request, e);
}
If it won't reach the finally block, you should stop ignoring the IOException which is being thrown:
catch (IOException e) {
// Exception handling
System.err.println(e.getMessage());
}
I'd asssume that the realname is just missing an absolute path.
I've had this error in the past but never fully understood it. After closing an OutputStream, regardless of the location of the java file or the manner in which it is called, completely screws up all sequential runs or attempts to write to another file, even if a different method of writing to a file is used. For this reason I avoid closing streams even though it is a horrible habit not to. In my program, I created was trying a test case that had a close statement which destroyed all of my previous streams, making it for some reason that they only write to files after the program has been terminated.
I kept the file location open and it writes the Text in the text file at the appropriate time, however the "Preview" panel in Windows does not detect it (which used to happen). Note that this all worked perfectly before the stream was accidentally closed. Is there a manner to reset the stream? I've tried flushing it during the process but is still does not run as it did prior.
Here is the method used to create the file:
protected void createFile(String fileName, String content) {
try {
String fileLoc = PATH + fileName + ".txt";
File f = new File(fileLoc);
if(!f.isFile())
f.createNewFile();
FileOutputStream outputStream = new FileOutputStream(fileLoc);
byte[] strToBytes = content.getBytes();
outputStream.write(strToBytes);
} catch (IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
return;
}
}
as well as the method used to read the file:
protected String readFile(String fileName) {
try {
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder("");
String fileLoc = PATH + fileName + ".txt";
File f = new File(fileLoc);
if(!f.exists())
return "null";
Scanner s = new Scanner(f);
int c = 0;
while(s.hasNext()) {
String str = s.nextLine();
sb.append(str);
if(s.hasNext())
sb.append("\n");
}
return sb.toString();
} catch(Exception e) {
e.printStackTrace();
return "null";
}
}
I'd be happy to answer any clarification questions if needed. Thank you for the assistance.
without try-resource, you need close in final clause to make sure no leak. Or use Stream.flush() if you need more 'in-time' update.
} catch (IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
return;
} finally {
outputStream.close();
}
You need to call flush() on the stream to write the bytes to the stream.
You're currently calling write() by itself, like this:
FileOutputStream outputStream = new FileOutputStream(fileLoc);
outputStream.write(content.getBytes());
What you want to do is this:
FileOutputStream outputStream = new FileOutputStream(fileLoc);
outputStream.write(content.getBytes());
outputStream.flush();
From the Javadoc (https://docs.oracle.com/javase/8/docs/api/java/io/OutputStream.html#flush--) for OutputStream (where FileOutputStream is an OutputStream), this is what it says for flush():
Flushes this output stream and forces any buffered output bytes to be written out. The general contract of flush is that calling it is an indication that, if any bytes previously written have been buffered by the implementation of the output stream, such bytes should immediately be written to their intended destination.
Even better would be to close the stream in a finally block, so that no matter what your code always tries to free up any open resources, like this:
FileOutputStream outputStream = null;
try {
outputStream = new FileOutputStream(fileLoc);
outputStream.write(content.getBytes());
outputStream.flush();
} finally {
if (outputStream != null) {
outputStream.close();
}
}
or use automatic resource management, like this:
try (FileOutputStream outputStream = new FileOutputStream(fileLoc)) {
outputStream.write(content.getBytes());
outputStream.flush();
}
I have a (possibly long) list of binary files that I want to read lazily. There will be too many files to load into memory. I'm currently reading them as a MappedByteBuffer with FileChannel.map(), but that probably isn't required. I want the method readBinaryFiles(...) to return a Java 8 Stream so I can lazy load the list of files as I access them.
public List<FileDataMetaData> readBinaryFiles(
List<File> files,
int numDataPoints,
int dataPacketSize )
throws
IOException {
List<FileDataMetaData> fmdList = new ArrayList<FileDataMetaData>();
IOException lastException = null;
for (File f: files) {
try {
FileDataMetaData fmd = readRawFile(f, numDataPoints, dataPacketSize);
fmdList.add(fmd);
} catch (IOException e) {
logger.error("", e);
lastException = e;
}
}
if (null != lastException)
throw lastException;
return fmdList;
}
// The List<DataPacket> returned will be in the same order as in the file.
public FileDataMetaData readRawFile(File file, int numDataPoints, int dataPacketSize) throws IOException {
FileDataMetaData fmd;
FileChannel fileChannel = null;
try {
fileChannel = new RandomAccessFile(file, "r").getChannel();
long fileSz = fileChannel.size();
ByteBuffer bbRead = ByteBuffer.allocate((int) fileSz);
MappedByteBuffer buffer = fileChannel.map(FileChannel.MapMode.READ_ONLY, 0, fileSz);
buffer.get(bbRead.array());
List<DataPacket> dataPacketList = new ArrayList<DataPacket>();
while (bbRead.hasRemaining()) {
int channelId = bbRead.getInt();
long timestamp = bbRead.getLong();
int[] data = new int[numDataPoints];
for (int i=0; i<numDataPoints; i++)
data[i] = bbRead.getInt();
DataPacket dp = new DataPacket(channelId, timestamp, data);
dataPacketList.add(dp);
}
fmd = new FileDataMetaData(file.getCanonicalPath(), fileSz, dataPacketList);
} catch (IOException e) {
logger.error("", e);
throw e;
} finally {
if (null != fileChannel) {
try {
fileChannel.close();
} catch (IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
}
return fmd;
}
Returning fmdList.Stream() from readBinaryFiles(...) won't accomplish this because the file contents will already have been read into memory, which I won't be able to do.
The other approaches to reading the contents of multiple files as a Stream rely on using Files.lines(), but I need to read binary files.
I'm, open to doing this in Scala or golang if those languages have better support for this use case than Java.
I'd appreciate any pointers on how to read the contents of multiple binary files lazily.
There is no laziness possible for the reading within the a file as you are reading the entire file for constructing an instance of FileDataMetaData. You would need a substantial refactoring of that class to be able to construct an instance of FileDataMetaData without having to read the entire file.
However, there are several things to clean up in that code, even specific to Java 7 rather than Java 8, i.e you don’t need a RandomAccessFile detour to open a channel anymore and there is try-with-resources to ensure proper closing. Note further that you usage of memory mapping makes no sense. When copy the entire contents into a heap ByteBuffer after mapping the file, there is nothing lazy about it. It’s exactly the same what happens, when call read with a heap ByteBuffer on a channel, except that the JRE can reuse buffers in the read case.
In order to allow the system to manage the pages, you have to read from the mapped byte buffer. Depending on the system, this might still not be better than repeatedly reading small chunks into a heap byte buffer.
public FileDataMetaData readRawFile(
File file, int numDataPoints, int dataPacketSize) throws IOException {
try(FileChannel fileChannel=FileChannel.open(file.toPath(), StandardOpenOption.READ)) {
long fileSz = fileChannel.size();
MappedByteBuffer bbRead=fileChannel.map(FileChannel.MapMode.READ_ONLY, 0, fileSz);
List<DataPacket> dataPacketList = new ArrayList<>();
while(bbRead.hasRemaining()) {
int channelId = bbRead.getInt();
long timestamp = bbRead.getLong();
int[] data = new int[numDataPoints];
for (int i=0; i<numDataPoints; i++)
data[i] = bbRead.getInt();
dataPacketList.add(new DataPacket(channelId, timestamp, data));
}
return new FileDataMetaData(file.getCanonicalPath(), fileSz, dataPacketList);
} catch (IOException e) {
logger.error("", e);
throw e;
}
}
Building a Stream based on this method is straight-forward, only the checked exception has to be handled:
public Stream<FileDataMetaData> readBinaryFiles(
List<File> files, int numDataPoints, int dataPacketSize) throws IOException {
return files.stream().map(f -> {
try {
return readRawFile(f, numDataPoints, dataPacketSize);
} catch (IOException e) {
logger.error("", e);
throw new UncheckedIOException(e);
}
});
}
This should be sufficient:
return files.stream().map(f -> readRawFile(f, numDataPoints, dataPacketSize));
…if, that is, you are willing to remove throws IOException from the readRawFile method’s signature. You could have that method catch IOException internally and wrap it in an UncheckedIOException. (The problem with deferred execution is that the exceptions also need to be deferred.)
I don't know how performant this is, but you can use java.io.SequenceInputStream wrapped inside of DataInputStream. This will effectively concatenate your files together. If you create a BufferedInputStream from each file, then the whole thing should be properly buffered.
Building on VGR's comment, I think his basic solution of:
return files.stream().map(f -> readRawFile(f, numDataPoints, dataPacketSize))
is correct, in that it will lazily process the files (and stop if a short-circuiting terminal action is invoked off the result of the map() operation. I would also suggest a slightly different to the implementation of readRawFile that leverages try with resources and InputStream, which will not load the whole file into memory:
public FileDataMetaData readRawFile(File file, int numDataPoints, int dataPacketSize)
throws DataPacketReadException { // <- Custom unchecked exception, nested for class
FileDataMetadata results = null;
try (FileInputStream fileInput = new FileInputStream(file)) {
String filePath = file.getCanonicalPath();
long fileSize = fileInput.getChannel().size()
DataInputStream dataInput = new DataInputStream(new BufferedInputStream(fileInput);
results = new FileDataMetadata(
filePath,
fileSize,
dataPacketsFrom(dataInput, numDataPoints, dataPacketSize, filePath);
}
return results;
}
private List<DataPacket> dataPacketsFrom(DataInputStream dataInput, int numDataPoints, int dataPacketSize, String filePath)
throws DataPacketReadException {
List<DataPacket> packets = new
while (dataInput.available() > 0) {
try {
// Logic to assemble DataPacket
}
catch (EOFException e) {
throw new DataPacketReadException("Unexpected EOF on file: " + filePath, e);
}
catch (IOException e) {
throw new DataPacketReadException("Unexpected I/O exception on file: " + filePath, e);
}
}
return packets;
}
This should reduce the amount of code, and make sure that your files get closed on error.
In Java, I have text from a text field in a String variable called "text".
How can I save the contents of the "text" variable to a file?
If you're simply outputting text, rather than any binary data, the following will work:
PrintWriter out = new PrintWriter("filename.txt");
Then, write your String to it, just like you would to any output stream:
out.println(text);
You'll need exception handling, as ever. Be sure to call out.close() when you've finished writing.
If you are using Java 7 or later, you can use the "try-with-resources statement" which will automatically close your PrintStream when you are done with it (ie exit the block) like so:
try (PrintWriter out = new PrintWriter("filename.txt")) {
out.println(text);
}
You will still need to explicitly throw the java.io.FileNotFoundException as before.
Apache Commons IO contains some great methods for doing this, in particular FileUtils contains the following method:
static void writeStringToFile(File file, String data, Charset charset)
which allows you to write text to a file in one method call:
FileUtils.writeStringToFile(new File("test.txt"), "Hello File", Charset.forName("UTF-8"));
You might also want to consider specifying the encoding for the file as well.
In Java 7 you can do this:
String content = "Hello File!";
String path = "C:/a.txt";
Files.write( Paths.get(path), content.getBytes());
There is more info here:
http://www.drdobbs.com/jvm/java-se-7-new-file-io/231600403
Take a look at the Java File API
a quick example:
try (PrintStream out = new PrintStream(new FileOutputStream("filename.txt"))) {
out.print(text);
}
Just did something similar in my project. Use FileWriter will simplify part of your job. And here you can find nice tutorial.
BufferedWriter writer = null;
try
{
writer = new BufferedWriter( new FileWriter( yourfilename));
writer.write( yourstring);
}
catch ( IOException e)
{
}
finally
{
try
{
if ( writer != null)
writer.close( );
}
catch ( IOException e)
{
}
}
Use FileUtils.writeStringToFile() from Apache Commons IO. No need to reinvent this particular wheel.
In Java 11 the java.nio.file.Files class was extended by two new utility methods to write a string into a file. The first method (see JavaDoc here) uses the charset UTF-8 as default:
Files.writeString(Path.of("my", "path"), "My String");
And the second method (see JavaDoc here) allows to specify an individual charset:
Files.writeString(Path.of("my", "path"), "My String", StandardCharset.ISO_8859_1);
Both methods have an optional Varargs parameter for setting file handling options (see JavaDoc here). The following example would create a non-existing file or append the string to an existing one:
Files.writeString(Path.of("my", "path"), "String to append", StandardOpenOption.CREATE, StandardOpenOption.APPEND);
You can use the modify the code below to write your file from whatever class or function is handling the text. One wonders though why the world needs a new text editor...
import java.io.*;
public class Main {
public static void main(String[] args) {
try {
String str = "SomeMoreTextIsHere";
File newTextFile = new File("C:/thetextfile.txt");
FileWriter fw = new FileWriter(newTextFile);
fw.write(str);
fw.close();
} catch (IOException iox) {
//do stuff with exception
iox.printStackTrace();
}
}
}
I prefer to rely on libraries whenever possible for this sort of operation. This makes me less likely to accidentally omit an important step (like mistake wolfsnipes made above). Some libraries are suggested above, but my favorite for this kind of thing is Google Guava. Guava has a class called Files which works nicely for this task:
// This is where the file goes.
File destination = new File("file.txt");
// This line isn't needed, but is really useful
// if you're a beginner and don't know where your file is going to end up.
System.out.println(destination.getAbsolutePath());
try {
Files.write(text, destination, Charset.forName("UTF-8"));
} catch (IOException e) {
// Useful error handling here
}
Using Java 7:
public static void writeToFile(String text, String targetFilePath) throws IOException
{
Path targetPath = Paths.get(targetFilePath);
byte[] bytes = text.getBytes(StandardCharsets.UTF_8);
Files.write(targetPath, bytes, StandardOpenOption.CREATE);
}
In case if you need create text file based on one single string:
import java.io.IOException;
import java.nio.file.Files;
import java.nio.file.Paths;
public class StringWriteSample {
public static void main(String[] args) {
String text = "This is text to be saved in file";
try {
Files.write(Paths.get("my-file.txt"), text.getBytes());
} catch (IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
}
Use Apache Commons IO api. Its simple
Use API as
FileUtils.writeStringToFile(new File("FileNameToWrite.txt"), "stringToWrite");
Maven Dependency
<dependency>
<groupId>commons-io</groupId>
<artifactId>commons-io</artifactId>
<version>2.4</version>
</dependency>
Use this, it is very readable:
import java.nio.file.Files;
import java.nio.file.Paths;
Files.write(Paths.get(path), lines.getBytes(), StandardOpenOption.WRITE);
import java.io.*;
private void stringToFile( String text, String fileName )
{
try
{
File file = new File( fileName );
// if file doesnt exists, then create it
if ( ! file.exists( ) )
{
file.createNewFile( );
}
FileWriter fw = new FileWriter( file.getAbsoluteFile( ) );
BufferedWriter bw = new BufferedWriter( fw );
bw.write( text );
bw.close( );
//System.out.println("Done writing to " + fileName); //For testing
}
catch( IOException e )
{
System.out.println("Error: " + e);
e.printStackTrace( );
}
} //End method stringToFile
You can insert this method into your classes. If you are using this method in a class with a main method, change this class to static by adding the static key word. Either way you will need to import java.io.* to make it work otherwise File, FileWriter and BufferedWriter will not be recognized.
You could do this:
import java.io.*;
import java.util.*;
class WriteText
{
public static void main(String[] args)
{
try {
String text = "Your sample content to save in a text file.";
BufferedWriter out = new BufferedWriter(new FileWriter("sample.txt"));
out.write(text);
out.close();
}
catch (IOException e)
{
System.out.println("Exception ");
}
return ;
}
};
Using org.apache.commons.io.FileUtils:
FileUtils.writeStringToFile(new File("log.txt"), "my string", Charset.defaultCharset());
If you only care about pushing one block of text to file, this will overwrite it each time.
JFileChooser chooser = new JFileChooser();
int returnVal = chooser.showSaveDialog(this);
if (returnVal == JFileChooser.APPROVE_OPTION) {
FileOutputStream stream = null;
PrintStream out = null;
try {
File file = chooser.getSelectedFile();
stream = new FileOutputStream(file);
String text = "Your String goes here";
out = new PrintStream(stream);
out.print(text); //This will overwrite existing contents
} catch (Exception ex) {
//do something
} finally {
try {
if(stream!=null) stream.close();
if(out!=null) out.close();
} catch (Exception ex) {
//do something
}
}
}
This example allows the user to select a file using a file chooser.
Basically the same answer as here, but easy to copy/paste, and it just works ;-)
import java.io.FileWriter;
public void saveToFile(String data, String filename) {
try (
FileWriter fw = new FileWriter(filename)) {
fw.write(data);
} catch (Exception e) {
throw new RuntimeException(e);
}
}
private static void generateFile(String stringToWrite, String outputFile) {
try {
FileWriter writer = new FileWriter(outputFile);
writer.append(stringToWrite);
writer.flush();
writer.close();
log.debug("New File is generated ==>"+outputFile);
} catch (Exception exp) {
log.error("Exception in generateFile ", exp);
}
}
It's better to close the writer/outputstream in a finally block, just in case something happen
finally{
if(writer != null){
try{
writer.flush();
writer.close();
}
catch(IOException ioe){
ioe.printStackTrace();
}
}
}
I think the best way is using Files.write(Path path, Iterable<? extends CharSequence> lines, OpenOption... options):
String text = "content";
Path path = Paths.get("path", "to", "file");
Files.write(path, Arrays.asList(text));
See javadoc:
Write lines of text to a file. Each line is a char sequence and is
written to the file in sequence with each line terminated by the
platform's line separator, as defined by the system property
line.separator. Characters are encoded into bytes using the specified
charset.
The options parameter specifies how the the file is created or opened.
If no options are present then this method works as if the CREATE,
TRUNCATE_EXISTING, and WRITE options are present. In other words, it
opens the file for writing, creating the file if it doesn't exist, or
initially truncating an existing regular-file to a size of 0. The
method ensures that the file is closed when all lines have been
written (or an I/O error or other runtime exception is thrown). If an
I/O error occurs then it may do so after the file has created or
truncated, or after some bytes have been written to the file.
Please note. I see people have already answered with Java's built-in Files.write, but what's special in my answer which nobody seems to mention is the overloaded version of the method which takes an Iterable of CharSequence (i.e. String), instead of a byte[] array, thus text.getBytes() is not required, which is a bit cleaner I think.
If you wish to keep the carriage return characters from the string into a file
here is an code example:
jLabel1 = new JLabel("Enter SQL Statements or SQL Commands:");
orderButton = new JButton("Execute");
textArea = new JTextArea();
...
// String captured from JTextArea()
orderButton.addActionListener(new ActionListener() {
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent ae) {
// When Execute button is pressed
String tempQuery = textArea.getText();
tempQuery = tempQuery.replaceAll("\n", "\r\n");
try (PrintStream out = new PrintStream(new FileOutputStream("C:/Temp/tempQuery.sql"))) {
out.print(tempQuery);
} catch (FileNotFoundException e) {
// TODO Auto-generated catch block
e.printStackTrace();
}
System.out.println(tempQuery);
}
});
I have published a library that saves files, and handles everything with one line of code only, you can find it here along with its documentation
Github repository
and the answer to your question is so easy
String path = FileSaver
.get()
.save(string.getBytes(),"file.txt");
My way is based on stream due to running on all Android versions and needs of fecthing resources such as URL/URI, any suggestion is welcome.
As far as concerned, streams (InputStream and OutputStream) transfer binary data, when developer goes to write a string to a stream, must first convert it to bytes, or in other words encode it.
public boolean writeStringToFile(File file, String string, Charset charset) {
if (file == null) return false;
if (string == null) return false;
return writeBytesToFile(file, string.getBytes((charset == null) ? DEFAULT_CHARSET:charset));
}
public boolean writeBytesToFile(File file, byte[] data) {
if (file == null) return false;
if (data == null) return false;
FileOutputStream fos;
BufferedOutputStream bos;
try {
fos = new FileOutputStream(file);
bos = new BufferedOutputStream(fos);
bos.write(data, 0, data.length);
bos.flush();
bos.close();
fos.close();
} catch (IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
Logger.e("!!! IOException");
return false;
}
return true;
}
In Java, I have text from a text field in a String variable called "text".
How can I save the contents of the "text" variable to a file?
If you're simply outputting text, rather than any binary data, the following will work:
PrintWriter out = new PrintWriter("filename.txt");
Then, write your String to it, just like you would to any output stream:
out.println(text);
You'll need exception handling, as ever. Be sure to call out.close() when you've finished writing.
If you are using Java 7 or later, you can use the "try-with-resources statement" which will automatically close your PrintStream when you are done with it (ie exit the block) like so:
try (PrintWriter out = new PrintWriter("filename.txt")) {
out.println(text);
}
You will still need to explicitly throw the java.io.FileNotFoundException as before.
Apache Commons IO contains some great methods for doing this, in particular FileUtils contains the following method:
static void writeStringToFile(File file, String data, Charset charset)
which allows you to write text to a file in one method call:
FileUtils.writeStringToFile(new File("test.txt"), "Hello File", Charset.forName("UTF-8"));
You might also want to consider specifying the encoding for the file as well.
In Java 7 you can do this:
String content = "Hello File!";
String path = "C:/a.txt";
Files.write( Paths.get(path), content.getBytes());
There is more info here:
http://www.drdobbs.com/jvm/java-se-7-new-file-io/231600403
Take a look at the Java File API
a quick example:
try (PrintStream out = new PrintStream(new FileOutputStream("filename.txt"))) {
out.print(text);
}
Just did something similar in my project. Use FileWriter will simplify part of your job. And here you can find nice tutorial.
BufferedWriter writer = null;
try
{
writer = new BufferedWriter( new FileWriter( yourfilename));
writer.write( yourstring);
}
catch ( IOException e)
{
}
finally
{
try
{
if ( writer != null)
writer.close( );
}
catch ( IOException e)
{
}
}
Use FileUtils.writeStringToFile() from Apache Commons IO. No need to reinvent this particular wheel.
In Java 11 the java.nio.file.Files class was extended by two new utility methods to write a string into a file. The first method (see JavaDoc here) uses the charset UTF-8 as default:
Files.writeString(Path.of("my", "path"), "My String");
And the second method (see JavaDoc here) allows to specify an individual charset:
Files.writeString(Path.of("my", "path"), "My String", StandardCharset.ISO_8859_1);
Both methods have an optional Varargs parameter for setting file handling options (see JavaDoc here). The following example would create a non-existing file or append the string to an existing one:
Files.writeString(Path.of("my", "path"), "String to append", StandardOpenOption.CREATE, StandardOpenOption.APPEND);
You can use the modify the code below to write your file from whatever class or function is handling the text. One wonders though why the world needs a new text editor...
import java.io.*;
public class Main {
public static void main(String[] args) {
try {
String str = "SomeMoreTextIsHere";
File newTextFile = new File("C:/thetextfile.txt");
FileWriter fw = new FileWriter(newTextFile);
fw.write(str);
fw.close();
} catch (IOException iox) {
//do stuff with exception
iox.printStackTrace();
}
}
}
I prefer to rely on libraries whenever possible for this sort of operation. This makes me less likely to accidentally omit an important step (like mistake wolfsnipes made above). Some libraries are suggested above, but my favorite for this kind of thing is Google Guava. Guava has a class called Files which works nicely for this task:
// This is where the file goes.
File destination = new File("file.txt");
// This line isn't needed, but is really useful
// if you're a beginner and don't know where your file is going to end up.
System.out.println(destination.getAbsolutePath());
try {
Files.write(text, destination, Charset.forName("UTF-8"));
} catch (IOException e) {
// Useful error handling here
}
Using Java 7:
public static void writeToFile(String text, String targetFilePath) throws IOException
{
Path targetPath = Paths.get(targetFilePath);
byte[] bytes = text.getBytes(StandardCharsets.UTF_8);
Files.write(targetPath, bytes, StandardOpenOption.CREATE);
}
In case if you need create text file based on one single string:
import java.io.IOException;
import java.nio.file.Files;
import java.nio.file.Paths;
public class StringWriteSample {
public static void main(String[] args) {
String text = "This is text to be saved in file";
try {
Files.write(Paths.get("my-file.txt"), text.getBytes());
} catch (IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
}
Use Apache Commons IO api. Its simple
Use API as
FileUtils.writeStringToFile(new File("FileNameToWrite.txt"), "stringToWrite");
Maven Dependency
<dependency>
<groupId>commons-io</groupId>
<artifactId>commons-io</artifactId>
<version>2.4</version>
</dependency>
Use this, it is very readable:
import java.nio.file.Files;
import java.nio.file.Paths;
Files.write(Paths.get(path), lines.getBytes(), StandardOpenOption.WRITE);
import java.io.*;
private void stringToFile( String text, String fileName )
{
try
{
File file = new File( fileName );
// if file doesnt exists, then create it
if ( ! file.exists( ) )
{
file.createNewFile( );
}
FileWriter fw = new FileWriter( file.getAbsoluteFile( ) );
BufferedWriter bw = new BufferedWriter( fw );
bw.write( text );
bw.close( );
//System.out.println("Done writing to " + fileName); //For testing
}
catch( IOException e )
{
System.out.println("Error: " + e);
e.printStackTrace( );
}
} //End method stringToFile
You can insert this method into your classes. If you are using this method in a class with a main method, change this class to static by adding the static key word. Either way you will need to import java.io.* to make it work otherwise File, FileWriter and BufferedWriter will not be recognized.
You could do this:
import java.io.*;
import java.util.*;
class WriteText
{
public static void main(String[] args)
{
try {
String text = "Your sample content to save in a text file.";
BufferedWriter out = new BufferedWriter(new FileWriter("sample.txt"));
out.write(text);
out.close();
}
catch (IOException e)
{
System.out.println("Exception ");
}
return ;
}
};
Using org.apache.commons.io.FileUtils:
FileUtils.writeStringToFile(new File("log.txt"), "my string", Charset.defaultCharset());
If you only care about pushing one block of text to file, this will overwrite it each time.
JFileChooser chooser = new JFileChooser();
int returnVal = chooser.showSaveDialog(this);
if (returnVal == JFileChooser.APPROVE_OPTION) {
FileOutputStream stream = null;
PrintStream out = null;
try {
File file = chooser.getSelectedFile();
stream = new FileOutputStream(file);
String text = "Your String goes here";
out = new PrintStream(stream);
out.print(text); //This will overwrite existing contents
} catch (Exception ex) {
//do something
} finally {
try {
if(stream!=null) stream.close();
if(out!=null) out.close();
} catch (Exception ex) {
//do something
}
}
}
This example allows the user to select a file using a file chooser.
Basically the same answer as here, but easy to copy/paste, and it just works ;-)
import java.io.FileWriter;
public void saveToFile(String data, String filename) {
try (
FileWriter fw = new FileWriter(filename)) {
fw.write(data);
} catch (Exception e) {
throw new RuntimeException(e);
}
}
private static void generateFile(String stringToWrite, String outputFile) {
try {
FileWriter writer = new FileWriter(outputFile);
writer.append(stringToWrite);
writer.flush();
writer.close();
log.debug("New File is generated ==>"+outputFile);
} catch (Exception exp) {
log.error("Exception in generateFile ", exp);
}
}
It's better to close the writer/outputstream in a finally block, just in case something happen
finally{
if(writer != null){
try{
writer.flush();
writer.close();
}
catch(IOException ioe){
ioe.printStackTrace();
}
}
}
I think the best way is using Files.write(Path path, Iterable<? extends CharSequence> lines, OpenOption... options):
String text = "content";
Path path = Paths.get("path", "to", "file");
Files.write(path, Arrays.asList(text));
See javadoc:
Write lines of text to a file. Each line is a char sequence and is
written to the file in sequence with each line terminated by the
platform's line separator, as defined by the system property
line.separator. Characters are encoded into bytes using the specified
charset.
The options parameter specifies how the the file is created or opened.
If no options are present then this method works as if the CREATE,
TRUNCATE_EXISTING, and WRITE options are present. In other words, it
opens the file for writing, creating the file if it doesn't exist, or
initially truncating an existing regular-file to a size of 0. The
method ensures that the file is closed when all lines have been
written (or an I/O error or other runtime exception is thrown). If an
I/O error occurs then it may do so after the file has created or
truncated, or after some bytes have been written to the file.
Please note. I see people have already answered with Java's built-in Files.write, but what's special in my answer which nobody seems to mention is the overloaded version of the method which takes an Iterable of CharSequence (i.e. String), instead of a byte[] array, thus text.getBytes() is not required, which is a bit cleaner I think.
If you wish to keep the carriage return characters from the string into a file
here is an code example:
jLabel1 = new JLabel("Enter SQL Statements or SQL Commands:");
orderButton = new JButton("Execute");
textArea = new JTextArea();
...
// String captured from JTextArea()
orderButton.addActionListener(new ActionListener() {
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent ae) {
// When Execute button is pressed
String tempQuery = textArea.getText();
tempQuery = tempQuery.replaceAll("\n", "\r\n");
try (PrintStream out = new PrintStream(new FileOutputStream("C:/Temp/tempQuery.sql"))) {
out.print(tempQuery);
} catch (FileNotFoundException e) {
// TODO Auto-generated catch block
e.printStackTrace();
}
System.out.println(tempQuery);
}
});
I have published a library that saves files, and handles everything with one line of code only, you can find it here along with its documentation
Github repository
and the answer to your question is so easy
String path = FileSaver
.get()
.save(string.getBytes(),"file.txt");
My way is based on stream due to running on all Android versions and needs of fecthing resources such as URL/URI, any suggestion is welcome.
As far as concerned, streams (InputStream and OutputStream) transfer binary data, when developer goes to write a string to a stream, must first convert it to bytes, or in other words encode it.
public boolean writeStringToFile(File file, String string, Charset charset) {
if (file == null) return false;
if (string == null) return false;
return writeBytesToFile(file, string.getBytes((charset == null) ? DEFAULT_CHARSET:charset));
}
public boolean writeBytesToFile(File file, byte[] data) {
if (file == null) return false;
if (data == null) return false;
FileOutputStream fos;
BufferedOutputStream bos;
try {
fos = new FileOutputStream(file);
bos = new BufferedOutputStream(fos);
bos.write(data, 0, data.length);
bos.flush();
bos.close();
fos.close();
} catch (IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
Logger.e("!!! IOException");
return false;
}
return true;
}