Writing Strings to a binary file java - java

I have a list of objects that has some simple String properties. I want to be able to save those strings to binary so that when you open the file outside the program, you only see 1's and 0's.
I have managed to use FileOutputStreamand saved the strings, however, I can't manage to get it to write to binary. The file reads as clean readable text. I have tried getBytes().
What would be the best approach for this? Keep in mind that I want to be able to read the file later and construct back the objects. Would it be better to use Serializable and save a list of objects?
Here is my FileWriter:
NB: The toString() is custom and returns a String with linebreaks for every property.
public class FileWriter {
public void write(String fileName, Savable objectToSave ) throws IOException {
File fileToSave = new File(fileName);
String stringToSave = objectToSave.toString();
byte[] bytesToSave = stringToSave.getBytes(StandardCharsets.UTF_8) ;
try (
OutputStream outputStream = new FileOutputStream(fileToSave);
) {
outputStream.write(bytesToSave);
} catch (IOException e) {
throw new IOException("error");
}
}
}

If your goal is simply serializing, implementing Serializable and writing them would work, but your string is still going to be readable. You can encrypt the stream, but anyone decompiling your code can still devise a way to read the values.

Related

How do I handle storage in a Java console app that cannot use DB?

I am given an assignment where we are not allowed to use a DB or libraries but only textfile for data storage.
But it has rather complex requirements, for e.g. many validations, because of that, we need to "access the db" (i.e. read the textfile) many times.
My question is: should I create a class like this:
class SomeRepository{
static ArrayList<Users> users = new ArrayList();
public SomeRepository(){
//instantiate this class on program load
//In constructor, we read the text file, instantiate and store everything inside the arraylist.
}
//public getOneUser(){ // for get methods, we don't read from text file at all }
/public save() { //text file saving code overhere }
}
Is this a good approach to solve the above problem? Currently, what we are doing is reading and writing to the text file every time we want to retrieve some data or write something new.
Wouldn't this be too expensive in terms of heap space memory? Or should I just read/write to the text file for every method?
public class IOManager {
public static void writeObjToTxtFile(String fileName, Object object) {
File file = new File(fileName + ".txt");//File will be created in the root directory where the program runs.
try (FileOutputStream fos = new FileOutputStream(file);
ObjectOutputStream oos = new ObjectOutputStream(fos);) {
oos.writeObject(object);
} catch (IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
public static Object readObjFromTxtFile(String fileName) {
Object obj = null;
File file = new File(fileName + ".txt");
FileInputStream fis = null;
try {
fis = new FileInputStream(file);
ObjectInputStream ois = new ObjectInputStream(fis);
obj = ois.readObject();
} catch (ClassNotFoundException | IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
return obj;
}
}
Add this class to your project. Since it's general for all Objects, you can pass and receive Objects like these as well: ArrayList<Users>. Play around and Tinker with it to fit whatever your specific purpose is. Hint: You can write other custom methods that calls these methods. eg:
public static void writeUsersToFile(ArrayList<Users> usersArrayList){
writeObjToTxtFile("users",usersArrayList);
}
Ps. Make sure your Objects implement Serializable. Eg:
public class Users implements Serializable {
}
I would suggest reading the contents of your file to a dynamic list such as an arraylist at the start of your program. Make the required queries/changes to your arraylist and then write that arraylist to your file when the program is set to close. This will save significant time over repeated file reads/writes.
This isn't without it's drawbacks, though. You don't want to hogg up memory in case of very large files - but considering this is an assignment, that may not be the case. Additionally, should your program terminate prior to the write at the end, all changes made to your database during the current execution will be lost.

Create a csv or simple text file using only streams

I'm about to use a jsf Primefaces download button to download a csv file.
The file doesn't exists and it can't use the Export utility because I need to build the csv at runtime.
This is a test attempt which works:
private StreamedContent file;
/** Getter,setter...*/
public void FileDownloadBean() {
InputStream stream = this.getClass().getResourceAsStream("test.csv");
file = new DefaultStreamedContent(stream, "application/csv", "test.csv");
}
The fact I'm using Primefaces doesn't really count here, what I want to achieve is to build a file of any kind, preferably CSV, without actually saving a (temp) file in the file-system.
I would like to append my data using a stream, so then I can easily append and manipulate Strings, bytes, and image files.
Any ideas? Maybe a Stringbuffer?
Thanks in advance.
I don't think you can "create a file without creating a file".
Use a String, StringBuffer, StringBuilder, or other variable to have the file's contents in memory.
Edit: Apparently, there are also streams to memory (?): ByteArrayInputStream and ByteArrayOutputStream
As far as I understood your question, the following answer "maybe" solves your problem:
public class InMemoryStreaming {
private StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
public void FileDownloadBean() throws IOException {
InputStream csvStream = this.getClass().getResourceAsStream("test.csv");
try (BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(
csvStream))) {
// on every method call the StringBuilder is appended
sb.append(br.lines().collect(
Collectors.joining(System.lineSeparator())));
}
}
}
If you want to serialize the StringBuilder into a real File, you can do it with the appropriate writer.

Java: How to I change the configuration file value in Java easily?

I have a config file, named config.txt, look like this.
IP=192.168.1.145
PORT=10022
URL=http://www.stackoverflow.com
I wanna change some value of the config file in Java, say the port to 10045. How can I achieve easily?
IP=192.168.1.145
PORT=10045
URL=http://www.stackoverflow.com
In my trial, i need to write lots of code to read every line, to find the PORT, delete the original 10022, and then rewrite 10045. my code is dummy and hard to read. Is there any convenient way in java?
Thanks a lot !
If you want something short you can use this.
public static void changeProperty(String filename, String key, String value) throws IOException {
Properties prop =new Properties();
prop.load(new FileInputStream(filename));
prop.setProperty(key, value);
prop.store(new FileOutputStream(filename),null);
}
Unfortunately it doesn't preserve the order or fields or any comments.
If you want to preserve order, reading a line at a time isn't so bad.
This untested code would keep comments, blank lines and order. It won't handle multi-line values.
public static void changeProperty(String filename, String key, String value) throws IOException {
final File tmpFile = new File(filename + ".tmp");
final File file = new File(filename);
PrintWriter pw = new PrintWriter(tmpFile);
BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(file));
boolean found = false;
final String toAdd = key + '=' + value;
for (String line; (line = br.readLine()) != null; ) {
if (line.startsWith(key + '=')) {
line = toAdd;
found = true;
}
pw.println(line);
}
if (!found)
pw.println(toAdd);
br.close();
pw.close();
tmpFile.renameTo(file);
}
My suggestion would be to read the entire config file into memory (maybe into a list of (attribute:value) pair objects), do whatever processing you need to do (and consequently make any changes), then overwrite the original file with all the changes you have made.
For example, you could read the config file you have provided by line, use String.split("=") to separate the attribute:value pairs - making sure to name each pair read accordingly. Then make whatever changes you need, iterate over the pairs you have read in (and possibly modified), writing them back out to the file.
Of course, this approach would work best if you had a relatively small number of lines in your config file, that you can definitely know the format for.
this code work for me.
import java.io.FileInputStream;
import java.io.FileNotFoundException;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.PrintWriter;
import java.util.Properties;
public void setProperties( String key, String value) throws IOException {
Properties prop = new Properties();
FileInputStream ip;
try {
ip = new FileInputStream("config.txt");
prop.load(ip);
} catch (FileNotFoundException e) {
// TODO Auto-generated catch block
e.printStackTrace();
}
prop.setProperty(key, value);
PrintWriter pw = new PrintWriter("config.txt");
prop.store(pw, null);
}
Use the Properties class to load/save configuration. Then simply set the value and save it again.
Properties p = new Properties();
p.load(...);
p.put("key", "value");
p.save(...)
It's easy and straightforward.
As a side, if your application is a single application that does not need to scale to run on multiple computers, do not bother to use a database to save config. It is utter overkill. However, if you application needs real time config changes and needs to scale, Redis works pretty well to distribute config and handle the synchronization for you. I have used it for this purpose with great success.
Consider using java.util.Properties and it's load() and store() methods.
But remember that this would not preserve comments and extra line breaks in the file.
Also certain chars need to be escaped.
If you are open to use third party libraries, explore http://commons.apache.org/configuration/. It supports configurations in multiple format. Comments will be preserved as well. (Except for a minor bug -- apache-commons-config PropertiesConfiguration: comments after last property is lost)

Java Apache FileUtils readFileToString and writeStringToFile problems

I need to parse a java file (actually a .pdf) to an String and go back to a file. Between those process I'll apply some patches to the given string, but this is not important in this case.
I've developed the following JUnit test case:
String f1String=FileUtils.readFileToString(f1);
File temp=File.createTempFile("deleteme", "deleteme");
FileUtils.writeStringToFile(temp, f1String);
assertTrue(FileUtils.contentEquals(f1, temp));
This test converts a file to a string and writtes it back. However the test is failing.
I think it may be because of the encodings, but in FileUtils there is no much detailed info about this.
Anyone can help?
Thanks!
Added for further undestanding:
Why I need this?
I have very large pdfs in one machine, that are replicated in another one. The first one is in charge of creating those pdfs. Due to the low connectivity of the second machine and the big size of pdfs, I don't want to synch the whole pdfs, but only the changes done.
To create patches/apply them, I'm using the google library DiffMatchPatch. This library creates patches between two string. So I need to load a pdf to an string, apply a generated patch, and put it back to a file.
A PDF is not a text file. Decoding (into Java characters) and re-encoding of binary files that are not encoded text is asymmetrical. For example, if the input bytestream is invalid for the current encoding, you can be assured that it won't re-encode correctly. In short - don't do that. Use readFileToByteArray and writeByteArrayToFile instead.
Just a few thoughts:
There might actually some BOM (byte order mark) bytes in one of the files that either gets stripped when reading or added during writing. Is there a difference in the file size (if it is the BOM the difference should be 2 or 3 bytes)?
The line breaks might not match, depending which system the files are created on, i.e. one might have CR LF while the other only has LF or CR. (1 byte difference per line break)
According to the JavaDoc both methods should use the default encoding of the JVM, which should be the same for both operations. However, try and test with an explicitly set encoding (JVM's default encoding would be queried using System.getProperty("file.encoding")).
Ed Staub awnser points why my solution is not working and he suggested using bytes instead of Strings. In my case I need an String, so the final working solution I've found is the following:
#Test
public void testFileRWAsArray() throws IOException{
String f1String="";
byte[] bytes=FileUtils.readFileToByteArray(f1);
for(byte b:bytes){
f1String=f1String+((char)b);
}
File temp=File.createTempFile("deleteme", "deleteme");
byte[] newBytes=new byte[f1String.length()];
for(int i=0; i<f1String.length(); ++i){
char c=f1String.charAt(i);
newBytes[i]= (byte)c;
}
FileUtils.writeByteArrayToFile(temp, newBytes);
assertTrue(FileUtils.contentEquals(f1, temp));
}
By using a cast between byte-char, I have the symmetry on conversion.
Thank you all!
Try this code...
public static String fetchBase64binaryEncodedString(String path) {
File inboundDoc = new File(path);
byte[] pdfData;
try {
pdfData = FileUtils.readFileToByteArray(inboundDoc);
} catch (IOException e) {
throw new RuntimeException(e);
}
byte[] encodedPdfData = Base64.encodeBase64(pdfData);
String attachment = new String(encodedPdfData);
return attachment;
}
//How to decode it
public void testConversionPDFtoBase64() throws IOException
{
String path = "C:/Documents and Settings/kantab/Desktop/GTR_SDR/MSDOC.pdf";
File origFile = new File(path);
String encodedString = CreditOneMLParserUtil.fetchBase64binaryEncodedString(path);
//now decode it
byte[] decodeData = Base64.decodeBase64(encodedString.getBytes());
String decodedString = new String(decodeData);
//or actually give the path to pdf file.
File decodedfile = File.createTempFile("DECODED", ".pdf");
FileUtils.writeByteArrayToFile(decodedfile,decodeData);
Assert.assertTrue(FileUtils.contentEquals(origFile, decodedfile));
// Frame frame = new Frame("PDF Viewer");
// frame.setLayout(new BorderLayout());
}

Writing in the beginning of a text file Java

I need to write something into a text file's beginning. I have a text file with content and i want write something before this content. Say i have;
Good afternoon sir,how are you today?
I'm fine,how are you?
Thanks for asking,I'm great
After modifying,I want it to be like this:
Page 1-Scene 59
25.05.2011
Good afternoon sir,how are you today?
I'm fine,how are you?
Thanks for asking,I'm great
Just made up the content :) How can i modify a text file like this way?
You can't really modify it that way - file systems don't generally let you insert data in arbitrary locations - but you can:
Create a new file
Write the prefix to it
Copy the data from the old file to the new file
Move the old file to a backup location
Move the new file to the old file's location
Optionally delete the old backup file
Just in case it will be useful for someone here is full source code of method to prepend lines to a file using Apache Commons IO library. The code does not read whole file into memory, so will work on files of any size.
public static void prependPrefix(File input, String prefix) throws IOException {
LineIterator li = FileUtils.lineIterator(input);
File tempFile = File.createTempFile("prependPrefix", ".tmp");
BufferedWriter w = new BufferedWriter(new FileWriter(tempFile));
try {
w.write(prefix);
while (li.hasNext()) {
w.write(li.next());
w.write("\n");
}
} finally {
IOUtils.closeQuietly(w);
LineIterator.closeQuietly(li);
}
FileUtils.deleteQuietly(input);
FileUtils.moveFile(tempFile, input);
}
I think what you want is random access. Check out the related java tutorial. However, I don't believe you can just insert data at an arbitrary point in the file; If I recall correctly, you'd only overwrite the data. If you wanted to insert, you'd have to have your code
copy a block,
overwrite with your new stuff,
copy the next block,
overwrite with the previously copied block,
return to 3 until no more blocks
As #atk suggested, java.nio.channels.SeekableByteChannel is a good interface. But it is available from 1.7 only.
Update : If you have no issue using FileUtils then use
String fileString = FileUtils.readFileToString(file);
This isn't a direct answer to the question, but often files are accessed via InputStreams. If this is your use case, then you can chain input streams via SequenceInputStream to achieve the same result. E.g.
InputStream inputStream = new SequenceInputStream(new ByteArrayInputStream("my line\n".getBytes()), new FileInputStream(new File("myfile.txt")));
I will leave it here just in case anyone need
ByteArrayOutputStream byteArrayOutputStream = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
try (FileInputStream fileInputStream1 = new FileInputStream(fileName1);
FileInputStream fileInputStream2 = new FileInputStream(fileName2)) {
while (fileInputStream2.available() > 0) {
byteArrayOutputStream.write(fileInputStream2.read());
}
while (fileInputStream1.available() > 0) {
byteArrayOutputStream.write(fileInputStream1.read());
}
}
try (FileOutputStream fileOutputStream = new FileOutputStream(fileName1)) {
byteArrayOutputStream.writeTo(fileOutputStream);
}

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