Java Code Examples: IO Streams and Files

Posted on 2022-11-22 Edited on 2024-12-19 In Java , Fundamentals

IO Streams

Input Streams

Get a Input Stream From a Path

Get Input Stream from filepath

String filepath = "D:\\test.txt"
// Java IO
InputStream is = new FileInputStream(filepath);

// Java NIO
Path path = Paths.get(filepath); 
System.out.println(path.normalize().toUri().toString()); // "file:///D:/test.txt"
InputStream is = new URL(path.toUri().toString()).openStream();

Get Input Stream from classpath

// Spring framework ClassPathResource
InputStream resourceAsStream = new ClassPathResource("application.yml").getInputStream();
// or
InputStream resourceAsStream = new ClassPathResource("/application.yml").getInputStream();

// Java ClassLoader
InputStream resourceAsStream = <CurrentClass>.class.getResourceAsStream("/application.yml");
// or
InputStream resourceAsStream = <CurrentClass>.class.getClassLoader().getResourceAsStream("application.yml");

Get Input Stream from file HTTP URL

// Java 8
InputStream input = new URL("http://xxx.xxx/fileUri").openStream();
// or
URLConnection connection = new URL(url + "?" + query).openConnection();
connection.setRequestProperty("Accept-Charset", charset);
InputStream response = connection.getInputStream();

// Java 9
HttpResponse response = HttpRequest
    .create(new URI("http://xxx.xxx/fileUri"))
    .headers("Foo", "foovalue", "Bar", "barvalue")
    .GET()
    .response();

// Spring Resource
Resource resource = new UrlResource("http://xxx.xxx/fileUri");
InputStream is = resource.getInputStream();

Read/Convert a Input Stream to a String

Using Stream API (Java 8)

String s = new BufferedReader(new FileReader("")).lines().collect(Collectors.joining(System.lineSeparator()));
// Or
String s = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(new FileInputStream(""))).lines().collect(Collectors.joining(System.lineSeparator()));

Using readAllBytes() (Java 9)

String s = new String(inputStream.readAllBytes());

Using IOUtils.toString (Apache Commons IO API)

String result = IOUtils.toString(inputStream, StandardCharsets.UTF_8);

Using ByteArrayOutputStream and inputStream.read (JDK)

ByteArrayOutputStream result = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
byte[] buffer = new byte[1024];
for (int length; (length = inputStream.read(buffer)) != -1; ) {
    result.write(buffer, 0, length);
}
// StandardCharsets.UTF_8.name() > JDK 7
return result.toString("UTF-8");

Performance: ByteArrayOutputStream > IOUtils.toString > Stream API

Output Streams

Write data to file

Write string to file

String s = "hello world";
String outputFilePath = new StringBuilder()
    .append(System.getProperty("java.io.tmpdir"))
    .append(UUID.randomUUID())
    .append(".txt")
    .toString();
try (BufferedOutputStream out = new BufferedOutputStream(new FileOutputStream(outputFilePath))) {
    out.write(s.getBytes(StandardCharsets.UTF_8));
}
System.out.println("output file path: " + outputFilePath);

Read and write

Read From and Write to Files

Java IO

String inputFilePath = new StringBuilder()
    .append(System.getProperty("java.io.tmpdir"))
    .append("7d43f2b6-2145-4448-9c8f-c43f97ba4d9e.txt")
    .toString();
String outputFilePath = new StringBuilder()
    .append(System.getProperty("java.io.tmpdir"))
    .append(UUID.randomUUID())
    .append(".txt")
    .toString();
try (BufferedInputStream in = new BufferedInputStream(new FileInputStream(inputFilePath));
     BufferedOutputStream out = new BufferedOutputStream(new FileOutputStream(outputFilePath))) {
    int b;
    while ((b = in.read()) != -1) {
        out.write(b);
    }
}
System.out.println("output file path: " + outputFilePath);

For read and write, you can use the following two ways:

int b;
while ((b = in.read()) != -1) {
    out.write(b);
}

byte[] buffer = new byte[1024];
int lengthRead;
while ((lengthRead = in.read(buffer)) > 0) {
    out.write(buffer, 0, lengthRead);
    out.flush();
}

Java NIO.2 API

String inputFilePath = new StringBuilder()
    .append(System.getProperty("java.io.tmpdir"))
    .append("7d43f2b6-2145-4448-9c8f-c43f97ba4d9e.txt")
    .toString();
String outputFilePath = new StringBuilder()
    .append(System.getProperty("java.io.tmpdir"))
    .append(UUID.randomUUID())
    .append(".txt")
    .toString();
Path originalPath = new File(inputFilePath).toPath();
Path copied = Paths.get(outputFilePath);
Files.copy(originalPath, copied, StandardCopyOption.REPLACE_EXISTING);
System.out.println("output file path: " + outputFilePath);

Get a Path object by Paths.get(filePath) or new File(filePath).toPath()

By default, copying files and directories won’t overwrite existing ones, nor will it copy file attributes.

This behavior can be changed using the following copy options:

REPLACE_EXISTING – replace a file if it exists
COPY_ATTRIBUTES – copy metadata to the new file
NOFOLLOW_LINKS – shouldn’t follow symbolic links

Apache Commons IO API

FileUtils.copyFile(original, copied);

File Path

Get File Path

get file path by class path

// Spring framework ClassPathResource
String filePath = new ClassPathResource(fileClassPath).getFile().getAbsolutePath();

// Java ClassLoader
URL url = FileUtils.class.getClassLoader()
    .getResource(fileClassPath);
String filePath = Paths.get(url.toURI()).toFile().getAbsolutePath();

Concatenate path

Path path = Paths.get("/Users/taogen", "files", "test.txt");
System.out.println(path.toAbsolutePath()); // Print: /Users/taogen/files/test.txt

Get filename from path string

Path path = Paths.get("/Users/taogen", "files", "test.txt");
System.out.println(path.getFileName()); // test.txt

Files

Creation

Create directory

File dir = new File(dirPath);
if (!dir.exists() || !dir.isDirectory()) {
    dir.mkdirs();
}

Files.createDirectories(new File(outputDir).toPath());

Delete

Delete a file

File file = new File(filePath);
file.delete();
// or
file.deleteOnExit();

Delete a directory

Java API

// function to delete subdirectories and files
public static void deleteDirectory(File file)
{
    // store all the paths of files and folders present inside directory
    for (File subfile : file.listFiles()) {

        // if it is a subfolder,e.g Rohan and Ritik,
        // recursiley call function to empty subfolder
        if (subfile.isDirectory()) {
            deleteDirectory(subfile);
        }

        // delete files and empty subfolders
        subfile.delete();
    }
}

Apache Common IO API

FileUtils.deleteDirectory(new File(dir));

FileUtils.forceDelete(new File(dir));

Update

Traversal

Information

Java File Mime Type

// 1
String mimeType = Files.probeContentType(file.toPath());
// 2
String mimeType = URLConnection.guessContentTypeFromName(fileName);
// 3
FileNameMap fileNameMap = URLConnection.getFileNameMap();
String mimeType = fileNameMap.getContentTypeFor(file.getName());
// 4
MimetypesFileTypeMap fileTypeMap = new MimetypesFileTypeMap();
String mimeType = fileTypeMap.getContentType(file.getName());

Temporary Files and Directories

Temporary Directory

// java.io.tmpdir
System.getProperty("java.io.tmpdir")

Windows 10: C:\Users\{user}\AppData\Local\Temp\

Debian: /tmp

Temporary file

// If you don't specify the file suffix, the default file suffix is ".tmp".
File file = File.createTempFile("temp", null);
System.out.println(file.getAbsolutePath());
file.deleteOnExit();

Path path = Files.createTempFile(fileName, ".txt");
System.out.println(path.toString());

Problems

Character Encoding Problems

The one-arguments constructors of FileReader always use the platform default encoding which is generally a bad idea.

Since Java 11 FileReader has also gained constructors that accept an encoding: new FileReader(file, charset) and new FileReader(fileName, charset).

In earlier versions of java, you need to use new InputStreamReader(new FileInputStream(pathToFile), ).

References

Java FileReader encoding issue