Streams, File I/O, and

Networking
Chapter 10

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 7th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0133862119 © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
Objectives
• Describe the concept of an I/O stream
• Explain the difference between text and binary files
• Save data, including objects, in a file
• Read data, including objects, in a file

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 7th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0133862119 © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
Overview: Outline

• The Concept of a Stream

• Why Use Files for I/O?
• Text Files and Binary Files

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 7th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0133862119 © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
The Concept of a Stream

• Use of files
• Store Java classes, programs
• Store pictures, music, videos
• Can also use files to store program I/O
• A stream is a flow of input or output (I/O) data
• Characters
• Numbers
• Bytes

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 7th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0133862119 © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
 The Concept of a Stream
• Streams are implemented as objects of special stream classes
• ClassScanner
• Object System.out
• Figure
10.1
I/O Streams

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 7th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0133862119 © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
Why Use Files for I/O

• Keyboard input, screen output deal with temporary data

• When program ends, data is gone
• Data in a file remains after program ends
• Can be used next time program runs
• Can be used by another program

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 7th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0133862119 © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
 Text Files and Binary Files
• All data in files stored as binary digits
• Long series of zeros and ones
• Files treated as sequence of characters called text files
• Java .java program source code
• Can be viewed, edited with text editor
• All other files are called binary files
• Movie, music files (these are almost always compressed)
• Compiled programs are binary
• Java .class files are binary files for JVM
• Effective manipulation requires specialized program

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 7th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0133862119 © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
Text Files and Binary Files

• Figure 10.2 A text file and a binary file containing the same values

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 7th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0133862119 © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
Text-File I/O: Outlline

• Creating a Text File

• Appending to a text File
• Reading from a Text File

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 7th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0133862119 © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
Creating a Text File

• Class PrintWriter defines methods needed to create and write to

a text file
• Must import package java.io
• To open the file
• Declare stream variable for referencing the stream
• InvokePrintWriter constructor, pass file name as argument
• Requires try and catch blocks

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 7th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0133862119 © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
Creating a Text File

• File is empty initially

• May now be written to with method println
• Data goes initially to memory buffer
• When buffer full, goes to file
• Closing file empties buffer, disconnects from stream

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 7th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0133862119 © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
Creating a Text File

• View sample program, listing 10.1

class TextFileOutputDemo
Sample
screen
output

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 7th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0133862119 © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
Creating a Text File

• When creating a file

• Inform the user of ongoing I/O events, program should not be "silent"
• A file has two names in the program
• File name used by the operating system
• The stream name variable
• Opening, writing to file overwrites pre-existing file in directory

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 7th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0133862119 © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
 Appending to a Text File
• Opening a new file begins with an empty file
• If already exists, will be overwritten
• Some situations require appending data to existing file
• Command could be
outputStream =
new PrintWriter(
new FileOutputstream(fileName, true));
• Uses constructor FileOutputStream(String name, boolean append)
• Method println would append data at end

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 7th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0133862119 © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
Reading from a Text File

• Note text file reading program, listing 10.2

class TextFileInputDemo
• Reads text from file, displays on screen
• Note
• Statement which opens the file
• Use of Scanner object
• Boolean statement which reads the file and terminates reading loop

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 7th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0133862119 © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
Reading from a Text File

Sample
screen
output

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 7th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0133862119 © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
 Reading from a Text File
• Figure 10.3 Additional methods in class Scanner

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 7th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0133862119 © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
Techniques for Any File
• The Class File
• Programming Example: Reading a File Name from the Keyboard
• Using Path Names
• Methods of the Class File
• Defining a Method to Open a Stream

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 7th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0133862119 © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
The Class File

• Class provides a way to represent file names in a general way

• A File object represents the name of a file
• The object
new File ("treasure.txt")
is not simply a string
• It is an object that knows it is supposed to name a file

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 7th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0133862119 © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
Programming Example

• Reading a file name from the keyboard

• View sample code, listing 10.3
class TextFileInputDemo2

Sample
screen
output

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 7th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0133862119 © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
Using Path Names

• Files opened in our examples assumed to be in same folder as where

program run (path is relative to where executable is running)
• Possible to specify path names
• Full path name
• Relative path name
• Be aware of differences of pathname styles in different operating
systems

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 7th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0133862119 © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
Methods of the Class File

• Recall that a File object is a system-independent abstraction of

file's path name
• Class File has methods to access information about a path and the
files in it
• Whether the file exists
• Whether it is specified as readable or not
• Etc.

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 7th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0133862119 © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
Methods of the Class File

• Figure 10.4 Some methods in class File

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 7th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0133862119 © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
Defining a Method to Open a Stream

• Method will have a String parameter

• The file name
• Method will return the stream object
• Will throw exceptions
• If file not found
• If some other I/O problem arises
• Should be invoked inside a try block and have appropriate catch
block

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 7th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0133862119 © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
Defining a Method to Open a Stream

• Example code

• Example call

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 7th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0133862119 © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
Case Study
Processing a Comma-Separated Values File
• A comma-separated values or CSV file is a simple text format used to
store a list of records
• Example from log of a cash register’s transactions for the day:
SKU,Quantity,Price,Description
4039,50,0.99,SODA
9100,5,9.50,T-SHIRT
1949,30,110.00,JAVA PROGRAMMING TEXTBOOK
5199,25,1.50,COOKIE

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 7th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0133862119 © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
Example Processing a CSV File

• View program that calculates total sales,

listing 10.4 class TransactionReader
• Uses the split method which puts strings separated by a delimiter
into an array

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 7th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0133862119 © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
Basic Binary-File I/O

• Creating a Binary File

• Writing Primitive Values to a Binary File
• Writing Strings to a Binary File
• The Class EOFException
• Programming Example: Processing a File of Binary Data

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 7th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0133862119 © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
Creating a Binary File

• Stream class ObjectOutputStream allows files which can store

• Values of primitive types
• Strings
• Other objects
• View program which writes integers,
listing 10.5 class BinaryOutputDemo

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 7th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0133862119 © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
Creating a Binary File
Sample
screen
output

• Note the line to open the file

• Constructor for ObjectOutputStream cannot take a
String parameter
• Constructor for FileOutputSream can

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 7th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0133862119 © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
Writing Primitive Values to a Binary File

• Method println not available

• Instead use writeInt method
• View in listing 10.5 BinaryOutputDemo
• Binary file stores numbers in binary form
• A sequence of bytes
• One
immediately
after another

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 7th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0133862119 © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
Writing Primitive Values to a Binary File

• Figure 10.5a Some methods in class ObjectOutputStream

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 7th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0133862119 © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
Writing Primitive Values to a Binary File

• Figure 10.5b Some methods in class ObjectOutputStream

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 7th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0133862119 © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
Writing Primitive Values to a Binary File

• Figure 10.5c Some methods in class ObjectOutputStream

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 7th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0133862119 © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
 Writing Strings to a Binary File
• Use method writeUTF
• Example
outputStream.writeUTF("Hi Mom");
• UTF stands for Unicode Text Format
• Uses a varying number of bytes to store different strings
• Depends on length of string
• Contrast to writeInt which uses same for each

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 7th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0133862119 © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
Reading from a Binary File

• File must be opened as an

ObjectInputStream
• Read from binary file using methods which correspond to write
methods
• Integer written with writeInt will be read with
readInt
• Be careful to read same type as was written

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 7th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0133862119 © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
Reading from a Binary File

• Figure 10.6a Some methods of class ObjectInputStream

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 7th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0133862119 © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
Reading from a Binary File

• Figure 10.6b Some methods of class ObjectInputStream

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 7th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0133862119 © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
Reading from a Binary File

• Figure 10.6c Some methods of class ObjectInputStream

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 7th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0133862119 © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
Reading from a Binary File

• Figure 10.6d Some methods of class ObjectInputStream

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 7th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0133862119 © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
 Reading from a Binary File
• Figure 10.6e Some methods of class ObjectInputStream

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 7th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0133862119 © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
Reading from a Binary File

• View program to read, listing 10.6

class BinaryInputDemo

Sample
screen
output

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 7th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0133862119 © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
The Class EOFException

• Many methods that read from a binary file will throw an

EOFException
• Can be used to test for end of file
• Thus can end a reading loop
• View example program, listing 10.7
class EOFExceptionDemo

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 7th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0133862119 © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
The Class EOFException

• Note the -1 formerly needed as a sentinel value is now also read

Sample
screen
output
• Always a good idea to check for end of file even if you have a sentinel
value

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 7th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0133862119 © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
Programming Example

• Processing a file of binary data

• Asks user for 2 file names
• Reads numbers in input file
• Doubles them
• Writes them to output file
• View processing program, listing 10.8
class Doubler

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 7th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0133862119 © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
Binary-File I/O, Objects & Arrays

• Binary-File I/O with Objects of a Class

• Some Details of Serialization
• Array Objects in Binary Files

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 7th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0133862119 © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
 Binary-File I/O with Class Objects
• Consider the need to write/read objects other than Strings
• Possible to write the individual instance variable values
• Then reconstruct the object when file is read
• A better way is provided by Java
• Object serialization – represent an object as a sequence of bytes to be written/read
• Possible for any class implementing Serializable

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 7th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0133862119 © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
Binary-File I/O with Class Objects
• Interface Serializable is an empty interface
• No need to implement additional methods
• Tells Java to make the class serializable (class objects convertible to sequence
of bytes)
• View sample class , listing 10.9
class Species

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 7th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0133862119 © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
Binary-File I/O with Class Objects
• Once we have a class that is specified as Serializable we can
write objects to a binary file
• Use method writeObject
• Read objects with method readObject();
• Also required to use typecast of the object
• View sample program, listing 10.10
class ObjectIODemo

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 7th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0133862119 © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
Binary-File I/O with Class Objects

Sample
screen
output

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 7th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0133862119 © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
Some Details of Serialization

• Requirements for a class to be serializable

• Implments interface Serializable
• Any instance variables of a class type are also objects of a serializable class
• Class's direct superclass (if any) is either serializable or defines a default
constructor

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 7th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0133862119 © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
Some Details of Serialization

• Effects of making a class serializable

• Affects how Java performs I/O with class objects
• Java assigns a serial number to each object of the class it writes to the
ObjectOutputStream
• If same object written to stream multiple times, only the serial number
written after first time

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 7th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0133862119 © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
Array Objects in Binary Files

• Since an array is an object, possible to use writeObject with

entire array
• Similarly use readObject to read entire array
• View array I/O program, listing 10.11
class ArrayIODemo

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 7th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0133862119 © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
Array Objects in Binary Files

Sample
screen
output

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 7th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0133862119 © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved