Ton Duc Thang University

Faculty of Information Technology

OBJECT-ORIENTED PROGRAMMING
LAB 9: EXCEPTIONS AND FILE HANDLING
I. Objective
After completing this lab tutorial, you can:

• Understand and implement exception handling in Java programs.

• Understand and implement file handling in Java programs.

II. Motivation
There are three types of errors:
- Syntax errors occur when the rule of the language is violated and detected by the compiler.

- Run-time errors occur when the computer detects an operation that cannot be carried out (e.g.,
division by zero, x/y is syntactically correct, but if y is zero at run-time a run-time error will
occur).
- Logic errors occur when a program does not perform the intended task.

Instead of deciding how to deal with an error, Java provides the exception mechanism:
- Indicate an error (exception event) has occurred.
- Let the user decide how to handle the problem in a separate section of code specific to that
purpose.
- Crash the program if the error is not handled.

III. Exception Indication

1. Use built-in exception class
There are many useful predefined exception classes, for example:
- ArithmeticException
- NullPointerException
- IndexOutOfBoundsException
- IllegalArgumentException
- InputMismatchException

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The following Java programs will illustrate the use of Exception Indication.

import java.util.Scanner;
import java.util.InputMismatchException;

public class SampleException {

public static void main(String[] args) {
Scanner sc = new Scanner(System.in);
boolean isError = false;

do {
System.out.println("Enter an integer number");
try {
int num = sc.nextInt();
System.out.println("num = " + num);
isError = false;
} catch (InputMismatchException e) {
System.err.println("Incorrect input");
sc.nextLine(); // skip newline
isError = true;
}
} while (isError);
}
}

public class SampleException {

public static double factorial(int n) throws IllegalArgumentException {
if (n < 0) {
IllegalArgumentException obj = new IllegalArgumentException(n + " is
invalid.");
throw obj;
} else {
double output = 1;
for (int i = 2; i <= n; i++) {
output *= i;
}
return output;
}
}

public static void main(String[] args) {

System.out.println("n = 5 --> " + factorial(5));
System.out.println("n = -1 --> " + factorial(-1));
/*
try {
System.out.println("n = -1 --> " + factorial(-1));
} catch (IllegalArgumentException err) {
System.out.println(err);
}
*/
System.out.println("n = 6 --> " + factorial(6));
}
}

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Faculty of Information Technology

2. Define new Exception class

New exception classes can be defined by deriving from class Exception. Then it can be used in throw
statements and catch blocks.
public class MathException extends Exception {
public MathException() {
super();
}
public MathException(String s) {
super(s);
}
}

public class SampleException {

public static double factorial(int n) throws MathException {
if (n < 0) {
throw new MathException(n + " is invalid.");
} else {
double output = 1;
for (int i = 2; i <= n; i++) {
output *= i;
}
return output;
}
}

public static void main(String[] args) throws MathException {

System.out.println("n = 5 --> " + factorial(5));
System.out.println("n = -1 --> " + factorial(-1));
/*
try {
System.out.println("n = -1 --> " + factorial(-1));
} catch (MathException err) {
System.out.println(err);
}
*/
System.out.println("n = 6 --> " + factorial(6));
}
}

IV. Java File Handling

File handling is an important part of any application.
Java has several methods for creating, reading, updating, and deleting files.
The File class from the java.io package, allows us to work with files.
To use the File class, create an object of the class, and specify the filename or directory name
import java.io.File; // Import the File class
...
File myObj = new File("filename.txt"); // Specify the filename

The File class has many useful methods for creating and getting information about files.

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Method Type Description

boolean Tests whether the file is readable or not

canRead()
boolean Tests whether the file is writable or not
canWrite()
boolean Create an empty file
createNewFile()
boolean Deletes a file
delete()
boolean Tests whether the file exists
exists()
String Returns the name of the file
getName()
String Returns the absolute pathname of the file
getAbsolutePath()
long Returns the size of the file in bytes
length()
String[] Returns an array of the files in the directory
list()
boolean Creates a directory
mkdir()
1. Create a File
You can use the createNewFile() method, to create a file in Java. This method returns a boolean
value: true if the file was successfully created, and false if the file already exists. Note that the
method is enclosed in a try…catch block. This is necessary because it throws an IOException if an
error occurs (if the file cannot be created for some reason):
import java.io.File; // Import the File class
import java.io.IOException; // Import the IOException class to handle errors

public class CreateFile {

public static void main(String[] args) {
try {
File myObj = new File("filename.txt");
if (myObj.createNewFile()) {
System.out.println("File created: " + myObj.getName());
} else {
System.out.println("File already exists.");
}
} catch (IOException e) {
System.out.println("An error occurred.");
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
}

Note: To create a file in a specific directory (requires permission), specify the path of the file and use
double backslashes to escape the "\" character (for Windows). You can just write the path on Mac and
Linux, like /Users/name/filename.txt.

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2. Write to a File
In the following example, we use the BufferedFileWriter class together with its write() method
to write some text to the file we created in the example above. Note that when you are done writing to
the file, you should close it with the close() method:
import java.io.BufferedWriter; // Import the BufferedWriter class
import java.io.FileWriter; // Import the FileWriter class
import java.io.IOException; // Import the IOException class to handle errors

public class WriteToFile {

public static void main(String[] args) {
try {
BufferedWriter bfWrite = new BufferedWriter(new FileWriter("filename.txt"));
bfWrite.write("Hello World !!!");
bfWrite.newLine();
bfWrite.write("I am studying IT.");
bfWrite.close();
System.out.println("Successfully wrote to the file.");
} catch (IOException e) {
System.out.println("An error occurred.");
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
}

Note: Many available classes in the Java API can be used to write files in Java: FileWriter,
BufferedWriter, PrintWriter, FileOutputStream, etc.
3. Read a File
In the following example, we use the BufferedFileWriter class to read the contents of the text file
we created in the example above.
import java.io.BufferedReader; // Import the BufferedReader class
import java.io.FileReader; // Import the FileReader class
import java.io.IOException; // Import this class to handle errors

public class ReadFile {

public static void main(String[] args) {
try {
BufferedReader bfRead = new BufferedReader(new FileReader("filename.txt"));
String text;
while ((text = bfRead.readLine()) != null) {
System.out.println(text);
}
bfRead.close();
} catch (IOException e) {
System.out.println("An error occurred.");
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
}

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Note: Many available classes in the Java API can be used to read in Java: FileReader,
BufferedReader, Scanner, FileInputStream, etc. Which one to use depends on the Java version
you're working with and whether you need to read bytes or characters, the size of the file/lines, etc.
4. Get File Information
To get more information about a file, use any of the File methods:

import java.io.File; // Import the File class

public class GetFileInfo {

public static void main(String[] args) {
File myObj = new File("filename.txt");
if (myObj.exists()) {
System.out.println("File name: " + myObj.getName());
System.out.println("Absolute path: " + myObj.getAbsolutePath());
System.out.println("Writeable: " + myObj.canWrite());
System.out.println("Readable " + myObj.canRead());
System.out.println("File size in bytes " + myObj.length());
} else {
System.out.println("The file does not exist.");
}
}
}

5. Delete a File
To delete a file in Java, use the delete() method:

import java.io.File; // Import the File class

public class DeleteFile {

public static void main(String[] args) {
File myObj = new File("filename.txt");
if (myObj.delete()) {
System.out.println("Deleted the file: " + myObj.getName());
} else {
System.out.println("Failed to delete the file.");
}
}
}

V. Exercises
1. Create class Calculator has 2 methods below:
- public double divide(int a, int b)

- public int multiply(int a, int b)

Implement exceptions:
- If parameter b = 0, the method throws an exception ArithmeticException with the
message “divide by zero”.

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- If the values of a and b are outside the range [-1000, 1000], the method throws an
exception NumberOutOfRangeException with the message “Number is outside the
computation”. NumberOutOfRangeException is a student-defined exception.
You can choose any pair of BufferedReader/BufferedWriter or Scanner/PrintWriter to do the
exercises that have read/write file requirements below.
2. Write a Java program:
- Read all contents from an input.txt file.
- Then uppercase all contents and write the results to the output.txt file.
For example:

input.txt output.txt

information technology INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

object oriented programming OBJECT ORIENTED PROGRAMMING

3. Write a method public static <E> boolean writeFile(String path, ArrayList<E> lst) to write
the generic ArrayList and apply it to write the result of exercise 3 in the Classwork section of
Lab 8 to a file with format sName - sID - gpa with each line is one Student object, instead of
print on the command prompt. (Hint: You can define the toString() method for each class)
4. Write a Java program:
- Get specific files by extensions from a given folder.
- Check if a file or directory specified by pathname exists or not.
- Check if the given pathname is a directory or a file.
- Append text to an existing file.
- Find the longest word in a text file.
5. Write a Java program:
- Read all integers from an input.txt file.
- Then calculate the sum of them and write the result to the output.txt file.

input.txt output.txt

0 12 8 4 140
6 100 1 9

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