Develop Reference

Create a new CSV file with java to add a new column

I am looking at the performance of a particular stock over a period of 30 days. I downloaded the data from Yahoo finance which appears as a CSV file. If I would like to create a new column in my dataset to show the daily percentage change between open and close using java refer to column H as where the output should appear, how should I do so?
Thanks in advance!

You can just edit your file line-by-line and add a separator character using the concat() function.
Open the file with a FileReader or BufferedReader and then start parsing.
Official Javadoc: https://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/lang/String.html#concat(java.lang.String)
Please see also this.

With OpenCSV: http://opencsv.sourceforge.net/
public class OpenCSVTest {
public static void main(String[] args) {
StringWriter target = new StringWriter();
try(CSVReader reader = new CSVReader(new StringReader("my,test"));
CSVWriter writer = new CSVWriter(target);) {
for(String[] line : reader) {
String[] added = Arrays.copyOf(line, line.length + 1);
added[added.length-1] = "addition";
writer.writeNext(added);
}
} catch (IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
System.out.println(target.toString());
}
}
You can replace the StringReader and StringWriter with your input and output. The reader will then iterate through each line in your csv for you. You can make a copy of the original line and add your new column and write it out into the target.
Breakdown of the code:
try(CSVReader reader = new CSVReader(new StringReader("my,test"));
CSVWriter writer = new CSVWriter(target);) { ... }
This is a try-with-resources block. It makes sure that the reader and writer are closed after they are done.
for(String[] line : reader) {
String[] added = Arrays.copyOf(line, line.length + 1);
added[added.length-1] = "addition";
writer.writeNext(added);
}
This is a standard for loop. The CSVReader implements the Iterable interface, which enables us to use it in the for loop directly.
Arrays.copyOf(line, line.length + 1); is a function that creates a copy of the array passed to it, but with a new size. Because you want to add a column, we make a copy of the original array my,test and add 1 more space at the end of it, where we can then assign the new value to it by doing: added[added.length-1] = "addition";
Finally, we just pass that to the writer which will then correctly write the values into the target, in this case a StringWriter, in your case likely a file.

Incomplete OpenCSV import

I tried importing the records from a CSV file using OpenCSV. I observed that OpenCSV was actually missing out some of the entries in the last row of my file. The code is as below. I know that I can do a writeAll operation. But i need individual rows for some other operations. The number of records are around 56000 in my file.
CSVReader reader = new CSVReader(new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(new FileInputStream(inputFile))));
CSVWriter writer = new CSVWriter(new BufferedWriter(new OutputStreamWriter(new FileOutputStream(new File(path2+File.separator+fileName)))), ',');
List<String[]> fileContents = new ArrayList<String[]>();
fileContents = reader.readAll();
for(int i=0; i<fileContents.size(); i++){
String[] row = fileContents.get(i);
writer.writeNext(row);

I figured out the error. I wasnt closing the writer.
writer.close();
And the file was completely written. Don't know why it doesnt complete writing the file otherwise.

Had a similar problem as described by Abhiroop when using StatefulBeanToCsv<T> beanWriter. Thanks for documenting the error with writer.close!
Since a Writer implements Closeable which extends AutoCloseable, it should be wrapped in a try-with-resources as shown below.
For me, the advantage of StatefulBeanToCsv is that it can be used with a MappingStrategy<T>.
public void exportToCsv(List<T> beans) {
try (PrintWriter printWriter = new PrintWriter(FILE_PATH_NAME)) {
final StatefulBeanToCsv<T> beanWriter = new StatefulBeanToCsvBuilder<T>(printWriter).build();
beanWriter.write(beans);
} catch (Exception e) {
throw new IllegalStateException("export failed", e);
}
}

please check if prior to the missing values, one of the values has a comma inside (i.e. "this is a csv value, with a comma inside it").

How to write or append string in loop in a file in java?

I'm having memory problem as working with very large dataset and getting memory leaks with char[] and Strings, don't know why! So I am thinking of writing some processed data in a file and not store in memory. So, I want to write texts from an arrayList in a file using a loop. First the program will check if the specific file already exist in the current working directory and if not then create a file with the specific name and start writing texts from the arrayList line by line using a loop; and if the file is already exist then open the file and append the 1st array value after the last line(in a new line) of the file and start writing other array values in a loop line by line.
Can any body suggest me how can I do this in Java? I'm not that good in Java so please provide some sample code if possible.
Thanks!

I'm not sure what parts of the process you are unsure of, so I'll start at the beginning.
The Serializable interface lets you write an object to a file. Any object that implemsents Serializable can be passed to an ObjectOutputStream and written to a file.
ObjectOutputStream accepts a FileOutputStream as argument, which can append to a file.
ObjectOutputstream outputStream = new ObjectOutputStream(new FileOutputStream("filename", true));
outputStream.writeObject(anObject);
There is some exception handling to take care of, but these are the basics. Note that anObject should implement Serializable.
Reading the file is very similar, except it uses the Input version of the classes I mentioned.

Try this
ArrayList<String> StringarrayList = new ArrayList<String>();
FileWriter writer = new FileWriter("output.txt", true);
for(String str: StringarrayList ) {
writer.write(str + "\n");
}
writer.close();

// in main
List<String> SarrayList = new ArrayList<String>();
.....
fill it with content
enter content to SarrayList here.....
write to file
appendToFile (SarrayList);
.....
public void appendToFile (List<String> SarrayList) {
BufferedWriter bw = null;
boolean myappend = true;
try {
bw = new BufferedWriter(new FileWriter("myContent.txt", myappend));
for(String line: SarrayList ) {
bw.write(line);
bw.newLine();
}
bw.flush();
} catch (IOException ioe) {
ioe.printStackTrace();
} finally {
if (bw != null) try {
bw.close();
} catch (IOException ioe2) {
// ignore it or write notice
}
}
}

Reading in text file in Java

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();
}

How to write an ArrayList of Strings into a text file?

I want to write an ArrayList<String> into a text file.
The ArrayList is created with the code:
ArrayList arr = new ArrayList();
StringTokenizer st = new StringTokenizer(
line, ":Mode set - Out of Service In Service");
while(st.hasMoreTokens()){
arr.add(st.nextToken());
}

import java.io.FileWriter;
...
FileWriter writer = new FileWriter("output.txt");
for(String str: arr) {
writer.write(str + System.lineSeparator());
}
writer.close();

You can do that with a single line of code nowadays.
Create the arrayList and the Path object representing the file where you want to write into:
Path out = Paths.get("output.txt");
List<String> arrayList = new ArrayList<> ( Arrays.asList ( "a" , "b" , "c" ) );
Create the actual file, and fill it with the text in the ArrayList:
Files.write(out,arrayList,Charset.defaultCharset());

I would suggest using FileUtils from Apache Commons IO library.It will create the parent folders of the output file,if they don't exist.while Files.write(out,arrayList,Charset.defaultCharset()); will not do this,throwing exception if the parent directories don't exist.
FileUtils.writeLines(new File("output.txt"), encoding, list);

If you need to create each ArrayList item in a single line then you can use this code
private void createFile(String file, ArrayList<String> arrData)
throws IOException {
FileWriter writer = new FileWriter(file + ".txt");
int size = arrData.size();
for (int i=0;i<size;i++) {
String str = arrData.get(i).toString();
writer.write(str);
if(i < size-1)**//This prevent creating a blank like at the end of the file**
writer.write("\n");
}
writer.close();
}

If you want to serialize the ArrayList object to a file so you can read it back in again later use ObjectOuputStream/ObjectInputStream writeObject()/readObject() since ArrayList implements Serializable. It's not clear to me from your question if you want to do this or just write each individual item. If so then Andrey's answer will do that.

You might use ArrayList overloaded method toString()
String tmp=arr.toString();
PrintWriter pw=new PrintWriter(new FileOutputStream(file));
pw.println(tmp.substring(1,tmp.length()-1));

I think you can also use BufferedWriter :
BufferedWriter writer = new BufferedWriter(new FileWriter(new File("note.txt")));
String stuffToWrite = info;
writer.write(stuffToWrite);
writer.close();
and before that remember too add
import java.io.BufferedWriter;

Write a array list to text file using JAVA
public void writeFile(List<String> listToWrite,String filePath) {
try {
FileWriter myWriter = new FileWriter(filePath);
for (String string : listToWrite) {
myWriter.write(string);
myWriter.write("\r\n");
}
myWriter.close();
System.out.println("Successfully wrote to the file.");
} catch (IOException e) {
System.out.println("An error occurred.");
e.printStackTrace();
}
}