I am creating a file on a network drive and then adding data to it. Time to time writing to that file fails. Is there a good way of checking if the file is accessible before every time i save data to it or maybe is tehre a way checking afther to see if the data was saved?
EDIT:
Right now i am using try-catch block with PrintStream in my code:
try
{
logfile = new File(new File(isic_log), "log_" + production);
//nasty workaround - we'll have a file the moment we assign an output stream to it
if (!logfile.exists())
{
prodrow = production;
}
out = new FileOutputStream(logfile.getPath(), logfile.exists());
p = new PrintStream(out);
if (prodrow != "")
{
p.println (prodrow);
}
p.println (chip_code + ":" + isic_number);
p.close();
}
catch (Exception e)
{
logger.info("Got exception while writing to isic production log: " + e.getMessage());
}
So might be the PrintStream the problem? (PrintWriter and PrintStream never throw IOExceptions)
I would use plain BufferedWriter and add the newlines myself as required.
Normal FileOutputStream operations should throw an IOException if there is an error.
AFAIK, The only exception is PrintWriter which does not throw an exception. Instead you need to call checkError() but it gives you no indication of what the error was or when it occurred.
I suggest you not use PrintWriter in this situation.
The only reasonable way to address this is to try to write to the file, and handle any resulting exception in an appropriate manner. It's pretty much impossible to know beforehand whether an I/O operation is going to succeed, due to the unreliable nature of networks.
Related
I've encountered an issue in Java trying to write to a file using FileWriter. Simply declaring FileWriter writer = new FileWriter("filelocation"); yields that there is an unreported IOException which must be caught.
To rectify this, naturally I put my FileWriter within a try-catch block, but that causes an issue with scope. To fix this, I tried declaring the FileWriter before the try catch block and assigning the location within the try catch. After the try catch block when I would like to use the FileWriter, it tells me it may not have been initialized. I'm not certain how else to handle this, and never encountered this issue in Java 1.7 or likewise.
This is an example of my final situation in case I was unclear;
Scanner userInput = new Scanner(System.in);
FileWriter writer;
try {
System.out.println("Enter the file directory you would like to store in");
String fileLocation = userInput.nextLine();
writer = new FileWriter(fileLocation);
} catch(java.io.IOException e) {
System.out.println("Error message");
}
writer.write("Stuff"); //writer may not have been initialized
The good way :
System.console().printf("Enter the file directory you would like to store in");
String location = System.console().readLine();
try (FileWriter writer = new FileWriter (location)) {
writer.write("Stuff");
} catch (IOException e) {
new RuntimeException("Error message", e).printStackTrace();
}
Explanations:
System.console().printf() enable to print message on stdout. System.out may be prefered is having a "console" is not strictly required.
Uses System.console() for console management. Much easier and clearer. Don't forget to allocate a console (ie don't use javaw executable).
Opens stream using try-with-resources statement
printStackTrace() print on stderr the call stack which ease finding error location in code.
I have built a new Exception to attach your error message with the stack trace adds the "catch" location in the stack.
Advices:
Uses byte-stream for file access (ie FileOutputStream). It enables to enforce charset (ie OutputStreamWriter) and buffering (ie BufferedOutputStream or BufferedWriter).
Using byte-stream makes also possible to switch to NIO Channel API.
Uses StandardCharsets to access default (and largely commonly used) charset (Charsets that all JVM implementations must support)
Read The Absolute Minimum Every Software Developer Absolutely, Positively Must Know About Unicode and Character Sets (No Excuses!)
call to printStackTrace() isn't really nice and you should quickly introduce a logging system to print messages.
In case of a CLI, have good attention when using logging system to not confuse user about system interactions (ie prompt for user input) and feedbacks (ie progress message)
You say "naturally" you put it within a try-catch block. There's nothing natural about that, since there are two ways to handle it, and the other way is more common:
Handle the exception in a try-catch block.
Don't handle the exception, but declare that your method throws the exception, and allow it to cascade up the call stack.
Your code looks like it's in a main method, so you could add throws IOException:
public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
In your particular case, however, you're getting the file location from a user prompt, so rather than letting the program die with an error, the appropriate thing would be to tell the user about the error and prompt for a new name.
Also, remember to close your resources.
public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
Scanner userInput = new Scanner(System.in);
FileWriter writer;
do {
System.out.println("Enter the file name you would like to store in");
String fileLocation = userInput.nextLine();
if (fileLocation.trim().isEmpty())
return; // Exit program when user pressed enter with a name
try {
writer = new FileWriter(fileLocation);
} catch(java.io.IOException e) {
System.out.println("Cannot write to file: " + e);
writer = null;
}
} while (writer == null);
try {
writer.write("Stuff"); //writer may not have been initialized
} finally {
writer.close();
}
}
The write and the close can still technically throw an error (e.g. disk full), which we allow to cascade and kill the program.
I have next function:
static void write()
{
try {
File file = new File ("flip.out");
BufferedWriter out = new BufferedWriter(new FileWriter(file));
out.write(sMax);
System.out.println(sMax);//This command it works
out.close();
} catch (Exception e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
The problem is that my program doesn't write anything in my file.
Few things to rectify -
Why create two different instances of File object
File file = new File ("flip.out");
BufferedWriter out = new BufferedWriter(new FileWriter("flip.out"));
All you need to do is
File file = new File ("flip.out");
BufferedWriter out = new BufferedWriter(new FileWriterfile(file ) ));
Next put your close call in finally statement rather than try block. Why? Because of IOException occurs resource will not be closed and if resource do not get closed your changes may not be reflected in the file.
Next it is a good programming practice not to catch Runtime exceptions. So do not use Exception as a ploymorphic type to catch your exception. Use whatever is being thrown like IOException in your case.
Now there might be various reasons why noting is being written in the file. As you are not getting and Exception one of the reason why this might be happening because your static function is not getting called or the string/object sMax(whatever that is) is empty.
Also the file(if not already present) will be created in the current directory. So if there are multiple instance is your code where your are creating files with same name then make sure you are checking the right one.
You have to flush the stream in order for what's in the memory to get written to the drive. What you wrote to BufferedWriter is sitting in a byte array waiting for the rest of it to be filled up before actually writing it to the disk. This helps with performance, but means you have to flush the stream in case you don't fill up that buffer. Here is how you do that:
static void write() throws IOException {
BufferedWriter out = new BufferedWriter(new FileWriter("flip.out"));
try {
out.write(sMax);
out.flush();
} catch (Exception e) {
// probably could ditch this and
// just the exception bubble up and
// handle it higher up.
e.printStackTrace();
} finally {
out.close();
}
}
So if it makes it to the flush() we know we wrote everything to the stream we wanted. However, if we ever get an exception we make sure we close the stream regardless of success or exception. And finally our stream is outside the try statement because the only exception ever thrown by Writers/OutputStreams during construction is FileNotFoundException which means the file never got opened in the first place so we don't have to close it.
can you call out.flush() before closing.
that will make sure any content in buffer is written to file immediately.
Well, I am trying to write a line of information to log in a text file (.txt) but this is the part where the code fails to write. Everything else works, except this but doesn't give any errors.
public void writeConfig(File config, Boolean append, String errored){
try {
Writer output;
if (config != null){
output = new BufferedWriter(new FileWriter(config));
} else {
output = new BufferedWriter(new FileWriter(er));
}
if (append == true){
output.append(errored);
} else {
output.write(errored);
}
} catch (Exception e){
try {
loadErrorLog(error, true, "Failed to write to Boom's Log.\n");
} catch (Exception e1){
log.info("Major Malfunction #686 : Tell Maker immediatly.");
}
}
}
You're not closing the writer, which means all the data is just staying in the buffer.
You should close it in a finally block.
Additionally:
your use of the append parameter is distinctly dodgy - you should almost certainly be passing it to the constructor of the FileWriter (or FileOutputStream). I don't think append in Writer does what you think it does.
Try to avoid comparing with true - just if (append) would have been clearer
Using the conditional operator could make your FileWriter code cleaner, especially if you used it just for the file:
File file = config == null ? er : config;
Writer writer = new BufferedWriter(new FileWriter(file));
I would avoid using FileWriter in the first place, as it always uses the platform default encoding. Use a FileOutputStream wrapped in an OutputStreamWriter instead, specifying the encoding explicitly (e.g. UTF-8)
Avoid catching Exception in most places; here it would be cleaner to just catch IOException.
It looks like your loadErrorLog method should probably be doing that logging on failure, otherwise I suspect you'll be writing that block of code every time you call it.
Do you really want to continue if you fail to write the config? Is it definitely this method which should handle the exception? I'd potentially remove the catch block entirely (leaving just a try/finally) and let the IOException bubble up the stack
The problem is, user clicks a button in JSP, which will export the displayed data. So what i am doing is, creating a temp. file and writing the contents in it [ resultSet >> xml >> csv ], and then writing the contents to ServletResponse. After closing the respons output stream, i try to delete the file, but every time it returns false.
code;
public static void writeFileContentToResponse ( HttpServletResponse response , String fileName ) throws IOException{
ServletOutputStream responseoutputStream = response.getOutputStream();
File file = new File(fileName);
if (file.exists()) {
file.deleteOnExit();
DataInputStream dis = new DataInputStream(new FileInputStream(
file));
response.setContentType("text/csv");
int size = (int) file.length();
response.setContentLength(size);
response.setHeader("Content-Disposition",
"attachment; filename=\"" + file.getName() + "\"");
response.setHeader("Pragma", "public");
response.setHeader("Cache-control", "must-revalidate");
if (size > Integer.MAX_VALUE) {
}
byte[] bytes = new byte[size];
dis.read(bytes);
FileCopyUtils.copy(bytes, responseoutputStream );
}
responseoutputStream.flush();
responseoutputStream.close();
file.delete();
}
i have used 'file.deleteOnExit();' and file.delete(); but none of them is working.
file.deleteOnExit() isn't going to produce the result you want here - it's purpose is to delete the file when the JVM exits - if this is called from a servlet, that means to delete the file when the server shuts down.
As for why file.delete() isn't working - all I see in this code is reading from the file and writing to the servlet's output stream - is it possible when you wrote the data to the file that you left the file's input stream open? Files won't be deleted if they're currently in use.
Also, even though your method throws IOException you still need to clean up things if there's an exception while accessing the file - put the file operations in a try block, and put the stream.close() into a finally block.
Don't create that file.
Write your data directly from your resultset to your CSV responseoutputStream.
That saves time, memory, diskspace and headache.
If you realy need it, try using File.createTempFile() method.
These files will be deleted when your VM stops normaly if they haven't been deleted before.
I'm assuming you have some sort of concurrency issue going on here. Consider making this method non-static, and use a unique name for your temp file (like append the current time, or use a guid for a filename). Chances are that you're opening the file, then someone else opens it, so the first delete fails.
as I see it, you are not closing the DataInputStream dis - this results to the false status, when you do want to delete file. Also, you should handle the streams in try-catch-finally block and close them within finally. The code is a bit rough, but it is safe:
DataInputStream dis = null;
try
{
dis = new DataInputStream(new FileInputStream(
file));
... // your other code
}
catch(FileNotFoundException P_ex)
{
// catch only Exceptions you want, react to them
}
finally
{
if(dis != null)
{
try
{
dis.close();
}
catch (IOException P_ex)
{
// handle exception, again react only to exceptions that must be reacted on
}
}
}
How are you creating the file. You probably need to use createTempFile.
You should be able to delete a temporary file just fine (No need for deleteOnExit). Are you sure the file isn't in use, when you are trying to delete it? You should have one file per user request (That is another reason you should avoid temp files and store everything in memory).
you can try piped input and piped output stream. those buffers need two threads one to feed the pipe (exporter) and the other (servlet) to consume data from the pipe and write it to the response output stream
You really don't want to create a temporary file for a request. Keep the resulting CSV in memory if at all possible.
You may need to tie the writing of the file in directly with the output. So parse a row of the result set, write it out to response stream, parse the next row and so on. That way you only keep one row in memory at a time. Problem there is that the response could time out.
If you want a shortcut method, take a look at Display tag library. It makes it very easy to show a bunch of results in a table and then add pre-built export options to said table. CSV is one of those options.
You don't need a temporary file. The byte buffer which you're creating there based on the file size may also cause OutOfMemoryError. It's all plain inefficient.
Just write the data of the ResultSet immediately to the HTTP response while iterating over the rows. Basically: writer.write(resultSet.getString("columnname")). This way you don't need to write it to a temporary file or to gobble everything in Java's memory.
Further, most JDBC drivers will by default cache everything in Java's memory before giving anything to ResultSet#next(). This is also inefficient. You'd like to let it give the data immediately row-by-row by setting the Statement#setFetchSize(). How to do it properly depends on the JDBC driver used. In case of for example MySQL, you can read it up in its JDBC driver documentation.
Here's a kickoff example, assuming that you're using MySQL:
protected void doGet(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response) throws ServletException, IOException {
response.setContentType("text/csv");
response.setCharacterEncoding("UTF-8");
Connection connection = null;
Statement statement = null;
ResultSet resultSet = null;
PrintWriter writer = response.getWriter();
try {
connection = database.getConnection();
statement = connection.createStatement(ResultSet.TYPE_FORWARD_ONLY, ResultSet.CONCUR_READ_ONLY);
statement.setFetchSize(Integer.MIN_VALUE);
resultSet = statement.executeQuery("SELECT col1, col2, col3 FROM tbl");
while (resultSet.next()) {
writer.append(resultSet.getString("col1")).append(',');
writer.append(resultSet.getString("col2")).append(',');
writer.append(resultSet.getString("col3")).println();
// Note: don't forget to escape quotes/commas as per RFC4130.
}
} catch (SQLException e) {
throw new ServletException("Retrieving CSV rows from DB failed", e);
} finally {
if (resultSet != null) try { resultSet.close; } catch (SQLException logOrIgnore) {}
if (statement != null) try { statement.close; } catch (SQLException logOrIgnore) {}
if (connection != null) try { connection.close; } catch (SQLException logOrIgnore) {}
}
}
That's it. This way effectlvely only one database row is been kept in the memory all the time.
I'm having a problem writing to a file:
FileInputStream fin;
try
{
fin = new FileInputStream ("c:/text.txt");
PrintStream p = new PrintStream(fin);
p.println ("test");
fin.close();
}
catch (IOException ioe)
{
System.err.println (ioe.getMessage);
}
Is there a problem with this code?
You need to use a FileOutputStream.
Get used to the following structure. You'll use it a lot in Java.
PrintStream out = null;
try {
out = new PrintStream(new FileOutputStream("c:/text.txt"));
out.println ("test");
} catch (IOException e) {
System.err.println (e.getMessage);
} finally {
if (out != null) {
try { out.close(): } catch (Exception e) { }
}
out = null; // safe but not strictly necessary unless you reuse fin in the same scope
}
At least until ARM blocks hopefully eventuate in Java 7.
As noted, you should close the PrintStream and not the FileOutputStream so the above is a better form to use.
Problems with that code that immediately strike me:
Non-standard formatting.
Awkward variable names.
The exception handling is not good.
Failure to close the file in the case of exceptions. (Use acquire(); try { use(); } finally { release(); }.
Hidden use of default character encoding.
PrintStream swallows exceptions. BufferedOutputStream is better.
Failure to flush the decorator. It may still have data buffered. Although actually in this case you have left the PrintStream in auto-flush mode, which can be a performance issue.
Use / for a Windows path separator. You might be able to get away with it, but it's not good.
So:
FileOutputStream fileOut = new FileOutputStream(
"c:\\text.txt"
);
try {
BufferedWriter out = new BufferedWriter(new OutputStreamWriter(
fileOut,
"UTF-8" // Or, say, Charset.defaultCharset()
));
out.write("test");
out.newLine()
out.flush();
} finally {
fileOut.close();
}
The class: FileInputStream is used to read input from a file. If you want to write to the file, you can use: FileOutputStream. If you want to make your life really easy, you can use a BufferedOutputStream as well.
As pointed out, you should close your streams in the finally block. The reason why you want to do that is say your program isn't really small, and it's a larger application. If you forget to close file streams, for example, the application will hold on to it and if you try to do something to it on the file system (read: at least in Windows) you won't be able to it. We've all seen the 'File cannot be deleted because it's still in use' error.
Here's an example of using the FileOutputStream + BufferedOutputStream: http://www.javadb.com/write-to-file-using-bufferedoutputstream.