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
