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Java: automatic closing of files in BufferdStreamReader to avoid FileNotFoundException (too many open files)

I have a legacy Java code that has opened a file and read lines as in the following code snippet within a method:
BufferedReader brdr =
new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(new FileInputStream(filenm)));
while ((String line = brdr.readLine()) != null) {
// ...
}
The variable fiilenm is passed in the method whenever called.
In order to avoid java.io.FileNotFoundException: ... (Too many open files), should I use brdr.close() to be on safer side?

Use try-with-resources.
Readers/InputStreams implement AutoCloseable interface, try-with-resources utilizes it. so it returned resources when your program escape from the try block.
try (BufferedReader brdr = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(new FileInputStream(filenm)))) {
while ((String line = brdr.readLine()) != null) {
. ..
}
} catch (Exception e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
reference : oracle documentation

try-with-resources details [duplicate]

This question already has answers here:
Try With Resources vs Try-Catch [duplicate]
(5 answers)
Closed 7 years ago.
Working with objects we use 3 basic steps:
Declaration
Instantiation
Initialization
And my question is about what steps must be done in () part of try-with in order auto close on resource to be made.
Example 1 - will FileReader object be auto closed in this code:
try (BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(filePath)))
{
//some code;
}
Example 2 - will the buf2 be auto closed in this code:
private static BufferedReader buf1;
public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
//some code
try (BufferedReader buf2 = buf1)
{
}
}
P.S. Someone supposes that this question is duplicate of Try With Resources vs Try-Catch . It is not. That question is about difference between try-catch and try-with-resources. My question is about details of try-with.

Whenever language related details are needed, the most complete reference is the Java Language Specification (just Google it). For the try-with-resources statement, you can read section 14.20.3 which states that the following:
try ({VariableModifier} R Identifier = Expression ...)
Block
is translated to
{
final {VariableModifierNoFinal} R Identifier = Expression;
Throwable #primaryExc = null;
try ResourceSpecification_tail
Block catch (Throwable #t) {
#primaryExc = #t;
throw #t;
} finally {
if (Identifier != null) {
if (#primaryExc != null) {
try {
Identifier.close();
} catch (Throwable #suppressedExc) {
#primaryExc.addSuppressed(#suppressedExc);
}
} else {
Identifier.close();
}
}
}
}
In your first example, the resource R is BufferedReader, the Identifier is br and the Expression is new BufferedReader(new FileReader(filePath)). It follows that only the BufferedReader is closed in the implicit finally block. The finally block will not call close on the FileReader because it is not part of the resource declaration itself. However, it happens that the implementation of BufferedReader.close() internally calls the close method of the wrapped FileReader. So the answer to the first question is yes simply because the wrapper object closed it (following the common wisdom that a resource should release any wrapped resource when being itself released), not because of the try-with-resources.
In the second example:
private static BufferedReader buf1;
public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
//some code
try (BufferedReader buf2 = buf1)
{
}
}
the answer depends on the some code. Here buf2 and buf1 both refer to the same object in memory. If this "some code" initializes buf1 to some object, then this object will be closed since buf2 also refers to it. If not and buf1 is null (and therefore buf2 is null), then nothing will be closed because of the null check in the implicit finally shown above.

FileReader will be closed. But that is not because it is in the try statement. It is because when BufferedReader is closed, it calls close() on FileReader as well. For a counter example, I have a class called X that implements AutoCloseable. And that class needs a Foo object in its constructor. So I write:
try (X x = new X(new Foo())) {
}
Will Foo be closed? It doesn't even implement AutoCloseable!
I wrote the following to test this:
BufferedReader buf1 = null;
try (BufferedReader buf2 = buf1) {
}
And it worked perfectly fine, no exceptions! My guess is that at the end of the try statement, it checks whether the object is null. If it is not, then close it. So in this case, because buf2 is null, it can't be closed.

Close multiple resources with AutoCloseable (try-with-resources)

I know that the resource you pass with a try, will be closed automatically if the resource has AutoCloseable implemented. So far so good. But what do I do when i have several resources that I want automatically closed. Example with sockets;
try (Socket socket = new Socket()) {
input = new DataInputStream(socket.getInputStream());
output = new DataOutputStream(socket.getOutputStream());
} catch (IOException e) {
}
So I know the socket will be closed properly, because it's passed as a parameter in the try, but how should the input and output be closed properly?

Try with resources can be used with multiple resources by declaring them all in the parenthesis. See the documentation
Relevant code excerpt from the linked documentation:
public static void writeToFileZipFileContents(String zipFileName,
String outputFileName)
throws java.io.IOException {
java.nio.charset.Charset charset =
java.nio.charset.StandardCharsets.US_ASCII;
java.nio.file.Path outputFilePath =
java.nio.file.Paths.get(outputFileName);
// Open zip file and create output file with
// try-with-resources statement
try (
java.util.zip.ZipFile zf =
new java.util.zip.ZipFile(zipFileName);
java.io.BufferedWriter writer =
java.nio.file.Files.newBufferedWriter(outputFilePath, charset)
) {
// Enumerate each entry
for (java.util.Enumeration entries =
zf.entries(); entries.hasMoreElements();) {
// Get the entry name and write it to the output file
String newLine = System.getProperty("line.separator");
String zipEntryName =
((java.util.zip.ZipEntry)entries.nextElement()).getName()
newLine;
writer.write(zipEntryName, 0, zipEntryName.length());
}
}
}
If your objects don't implement AutoClosable (DataInputStream does), or must be declared before the try-with-resources, then the appropriate place to close them is in a finally block, also mentioned in the linked documentation.

Don't worry, things will "just work". From Socket's documentation:
Closing this socket will also close the socket's InputStream and OutputStream.
I understand your concern about not explicitly calling close() on the input and output objects and in fact it's generally better to ensure all resources are automatically managed by the try-with-resources block, like this:
try (Socket socket = new Socket();
InputStream input = new DataInputStream(socket.getInputStream());
OutputStream output = new DataOutputStream(socket.getOutputStream());) {
} catch (IOException e) {
}
This would have the effect that the socket object would be "closed multiple times", but that should not do any harm (this is one of the reasons why it's generally advised that all implementations of close() be made idempotent).

In addition to the above answers, This is the improvement added in Java 9.
Java 9 try-with-resources makes an improved way of writing code. Now you can declare the variable outside the try block and use them inside try block directly.because of this you will get following benefits.
The Resources which it declared outside try( which is effectively final or final) can be automatically close by automatic resource management by just adding them in the try block.
You no need to re-refer objects declared outside try block nor need to close them manually as we need to do in Java 7.
It also helps to write clean code.
try-with-resource can we write like this in Java 9.
public void loadDataFromDB() throws SQLException {
Connection dbCon = DriverManager.getConnection("url", "user", "password");
try (dbCon; ResultSet rs = dbCon.createStatement().executeQuery("select * from emp")) {
while (rs.next()) {
System.out.println("In loadDataFromDB() =====>>>>>>>>>>>> " + rs.getString(1));
}
} catch (SQLException e) {
System.out.println("Exception occurs while reading the data from DB ->" + e.getMessage());
}
}
Here automatic resource management will automatically close both the objects dbCon & rs.
For the better understanding of the list of above define use cases please find some Java 7 code.
Example 1:
public void loadDataFromDB() throws SQLException {
Connection dbCon = DriverManager.getConnection("url", "user", "password");
try (ResultSet rs = dbCon.createStatement().executeQuery("select * from emp")) {
while (rs.next()) {
System.out.println("In loadDataFromDB() =====>>>>>>>>>>>> " + rs.getString(1));
}
} catch (SQLException e) {
System.out.println("Exception occurs while reading the data from DB ->" + e.getMessage());
} finally {
if (null != dbCon)
dbCon.close();
}
}
Example 2:
// BufferedReader is declared outside try() block
BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new FileReader("C://readfile/input.txt"));
try (BufferedReader inBr = br) {
// ...
}
} catch (IOException e) {
// ...
}
In the above samples you can see if the object is ouside try then either we need to close manually or re-refer it. Also in the case of multiple objects in the try block, it looks messy and even if you declared inside try then you can't use outside try block.

Answers above are great but there are some cases when try-with-resources doesn't help.
Take a look at this code example:
private static byte[] getFileBytes(Collection<String> fileContent) throws CustomServiceException {
try (ByteArrayOutputStream baos = new ByteArrayOutputStream()) {
try (BufferedWriter writer = new BufferedWriter(new OutputStreamWriter(baos))) {
for (String fileLine : fileContent) {
writer.append(fileLine);
writer.newLine();
}
}
return baos.toByteArray();
} catch (IOException e) {
throw new CustomServiceException(SC_INTERNAL_SERVER_ERROR, "Unable to serialize file data.");
}
}
In this example u can't just use try-with-resources block cause writer has to flush the output buffer to the underlying character stream so placing writer into try-with-resources block won't do the trick and method will return empty array.

Java resource closing

I'm writing an app that connect to a website and read one line from it. I do it like this:
try{
URLConnection connection = new URL("www.example.com").openConnection();
BufferedReader rd = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(connection.getInputStream()));
String response = rd.readLine();
rd.close();
}catch (Exception e) {
//exception handling
}
Is it good? I mean, I close the BufferedReader in the last line, but I do not close the InputStreamReader. Should I create a standalone InputStreamReader from the connection.getInputStream, and a BufferedReader from the standalone InputStreamReader, than close all the two readers?
I think it will be better to place the closing methods in the finally block like this:
InputStreamReader isr = null;
BufferedReader br = null;
try{
URLConnection connection = new URL("www.example.com").openConnection();
isr = new InputStreamReader(connection.getInputStream());
br = new BufferedReader(isr);
String response = br.readLine();
}catch (Exception e) {
//exception handling
}finally{
br.close();
isr.close();
}
But it is ugly, because the closing methods can throw exception, so I have to handle or throw it.
Which solution is better? Or what would be the best solution?

The general idiom for resource acquisition and release in Java is:
final Resource resource = acquire();
try {
use(resource);
} finally {
resource.release();
}
Note:
try should immediately follow the acquire. This means you can't wrap it in the decorator and maintain safety (and removing spaces or putting things on one line doesn't help:).
One release per finally, otherwise it wont be exception safe.
Avoid null, use final. Otherwise you'll have messy code and potential for NPEs.
Generally there is no need to close the decorator unless it has a further resource associated with it. However, you will generally need to flush outputs, but avoid that in the exception case.
The exception should either be passed through to the caller, or caught from a surrounding try block (Java leads you astray here).
ou can abstract this nonsense with the Execute Around idiom, so you don't have to repeat yourself (just write a lot of boilerplate).

Closing the BufferedReader is enough - this closes the underlying reader too.
Yishai posted a nice pattern for closing the streams (closing might throw another exception).

Is it good? I mean, I close the BufferedReader in the last line, but I do not close the InputStreamReader.
Apart from the fact that it should be done in the finally (so that the close is ensured, even in case of an exception), it's fine. The Java IO classes uses the decorator pattern. The close will be delegated to the underlying streams.
But it is ugly, because the closing methods can throw exception, so I have to handle or throw it.
When the close throws an exception, it often just means that the other side has been closed or deleted, which is completely out of your control. You can at highest log or ignore it. In a simple application I would just ignore it. In a mission critical application I would log it, just to be sure.
In a nut, your code can be rewritten as:
BufferedReader br = null;
try {
URLConnection connection = new URL("www.example.com").openConnection();
br = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(connection.getInputStream()));
String response = br.readLine();
}catch (Exception e) {
//exception handling
}finally{
if (br != null) try { br.close(); } catch (IOException ignore) {}
}
In Java 7 there will be automatic resource handling which would made your code as concise as:
try (BufferedReader br = new InputStreamReader(new URL("www.example.com").openStream())) {
String response = br.readLine();
} catch (Exception e) {
//exception handling
}
See also:
Java IO tutorial
C# "using" keyword in Java
How to use URLConnection

BufferedReader br = null;
You are declaring a variable without assigning it (null doesn't count - it is a useless assignment in this case). This is a code "smell" in Java (ref Effective Java; Code Complete for more on variable declaration).
}finally{
br.close();
isr.close();
}
First, you only need to close the top-most stream decorator (br will close isr). Secondly, if br.close() threw an exception, isr.close() would not be called, so this is not sound code. Under certain exception conditions, your code will hide the originating exception with a NullPointerException.
isr = new InputStreamReader(connection.getInputStream());
If the (admittedly unlikely) event that the InputStreamReader constructor threw any kind of runtime exception, the stream from the connection would not be closed.
Make use of the Closeable interface to reduce redundancy.
Here is how I would write your code:
URLConnection connection = new URL("www.example.com").openConnection();
InputStream in = connection.getInputStream();
Closeable resource = in;
try {
InputStreamReader isr = new InputStreamReader(in);
resource = isr;
BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(isr);
resource = br;
String response = br.readLine();
} finally {
resource.close();
}
Note that:
no matter what kind of exception is thrown (runtime or checked) or where, the code does not leak stream resources
there is no catch block; exceptions should be passed up to where the code can make a sensible decision about error handling; if this method was the right place, you'd surround all of the above with try/catch
A while back, I spent some time thinking about how to avoid leaking resources/data when things go wrong.

I think it will be better to place the
closing methods in the finally block
Yes, always. Because an exception might occur and resources aren't released/closed properly.
You only need to close the most outer reader because it will be responsible for closing any enclosing readers.
Yes, it's ugly... for now. I think there are plans for an automatic resource management in Java.

I'd use apache commons IO for this, as others have suggested, mainly IOUtils.toString(InputStream) and IOUtils.closeQuietly(InputStream):
public String readFromUrl(final String url) {
InputStream stream = null; // keep this for finally block
try {
stream = new URL(url).openConnection().getInputStream(); // don't keep unused locals
return IOUtils.toString(stream);
} catch (final IOException e) {
// handle IO errors here (probably not like this)
throw new IllegalStateException("Can't read URL " + url, e);
} finally {
// close the stream here, if it's null, it will be ignored
IOUtils.closeQuietly(stream);
}
}

You don't need multiple close statements for any of the nested streams and readers in java.io. It's very rare to need to close more than one thing in a single finally - most of the constructors can throw an exception, so you would be trying to close things you haven't created yet.
If you want to close the stream whether or not the read succeeds, then you need to put in into a finally.
Don't assign null to variables and then compare them to see whether something happened earlier; instead structure your program so the path where you close the stream can only be reached if the exception is not thrown. Apart from the variables used to iterate in for loops, variables should not need to change value - I tend to mark everything final unless there is a requirement to do otherwise. Having flags around your program to tell you how you got to the code currently being executed, and then changing behaviour based on those flags, is very much a procedural (not even structured) style of programming.
How you nest the try/catch/finally blocks depends on whether you want to handle the exceptions thrown by the different stages differently.
private static final String questionUrl = "http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3044510/";
public static void main ( String...args )
{
try {
final URLConnection connection = new URL ( args.length > 0 ? args[0] : questionUrl ).openConnection();
final BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader ( new InputStreamReader (
connection.getInputStream(), getEncoding ( connection ) ) );
try {
final String response = br.readLine();
System.out.println ( response );
} catch ( IOException e ) {
// exception handling for reading from reader
} finally {
// br is final and cannot be null. no need to check
br.close();
}
} catch ( UnsupportedEncodingException uee ) {
// exception handling for unsupported character encoding
} catch ( IOException e ) {
// exception handling for connecting and opening reader
// or for closing reader
}
}
getEncoding needs to inspect the results of the connection's getContentEncoding() and getContentType() to determine the encoding of the web page; your code just uses the platform's default encoding, which may well be wrong.
Your example though is unusual in structured terms, since it is very procedural; normally you would separate the printing and the retrieving in a larger system, and allow the client code to handle any exception (or sometimes catch and create a custom exception):
public static void main ( String...args )
{
final GetOneLine getOneLine = new GetOneLine();
try {
final String value = getOneLine.retrieve ( new URL ( args.length > 0 ? args[0] : questionUrl ) );
System.out.println ( value );
} catch ( IOException e ) {
// exception handling for retrieving one line of text
}
}
public String retrieve ( URL url ) throws IOException
{
final URLConnection connection = url.openConnection();
final InputStream in = connection.getInputStream();
try {
final BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader ( new InputStreamReader (
in, getEncoding ( connection ) ) );
try {
return br.readLine();
} finally {
br.close();
}
} finally {
in.close();
}
}
As McDowell pointed out, you may need to close the input stream if new InputStreamReader throws.

In scope of Java 8 I would use alike:
try(Resource resource = acquire()) {
use(resource);
reuse(resource);
}

Java File Handling, what did I do wrong?

Wrote up a basic file handler for a Java Homework assignment, and when I got the assignment back I had some notes about failing to catch a few instances:
Buffer from file could have been null.
File was not found
File stream wasn't closed
Here is the block of code that is used for opening a file:
/**
* Create a Filestream, Buffer, and a String to store the Buffer.
*/
FileInputStream fin = null;
BufferedReader buffRead = null;
String loadedString = null;
/** Try to open the file from user input */
try
{
fin = new FileInputStream(programPath + fileToParse);
buffRead = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(fin));
loadedString = buffRead.readLine();
fin.close();
}
/** Catch the error if we can't open the file */
catch(IOException e)
{
System.err.println("CRITICAL: Unable to open text file!");
System.err.println("Exiting!");
System.exit(-1);
}
The one comment I had from him was that fin.close(); needed to be in a finally block, which I did not have at all. But I thought that the way I have created the try/catch it would have prevented an issue with the file not opening.
Let me be clear on a few things: This is not for a current assignment (not trying to get someone to do my own work), I have already created my project and have been graded on it. I did not fully understand my Professor's reasoning myself. Finally, I do not have a lot of Java experience, so I was a little confused why my catch wasn't good enough.

Buffer from file could have been null.
The file may be empty. That is, end-of-file is reach upon opening the file. loadedString = buffRead.readLine() would then have returned null.
Perhaps you should have fixed this by adding something like if (loadedString == null) loadedString = "";
File was not found
As explained in the documentation of the constructor of FileInputStream(String) it may throw a FileNotFoundException. You do catch this in your IOException clause (since FileNotFoundException is an IOException), so it's fine, but you could perhaps have done:
} catch (FileNotFoundException fnfe) {
System.err.println("File not fonud!");
} catch (IOException ioex {
System.err.println("Some other error");
}
File stream wasn't closed
You do call fin.close() which in normal circumstances closes the file stream. Perhaps he means that it's not always closed. The readLine could potentially throw an IOException in which case the close() is skipped. That's the reason for having it in a finally clause (which makes sure it gets called no matter what happens in the try-block. (*)
(*) As #mmyers correctly points out, putting the close() in a finally block will actually not be sufficient since you call System.exit(-1) in the catch-block. If that really is the desired behavior, you could set an error flag in the catch-clause, and exit after the finally-clause if this flag is set.

But what if your program threw an exception on the second or third line of your try block?
buffRead = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(fin));
loadedString = buffRead.readLine();
By this point, a filehandle has been opened and assigned to fin. You could trap the exception but the filehandle would remain open.
You'll want to move the fin.close() statement to a finally block:
} finally {
try {
if (fin != null) {
fin.close();
}
} catch (IOException e2) {
}
}

Say buffRead.readLine() throws an exception, will your FileInputStream ever be closed, or will that line be skipped? The purpose of a finally block is that even in exceptional circumastances, the code in the finally block will execute.

There are a lot of other errors which may happen other than opening the file.
In the end you may end up with a fin which is defined or not which you have to protect against null pointer errors, and do not forget that closing the file can throw a new exception.
My advice is to capture this in a separate routine and let the IOExceptions fly out of it :
something like
private String readFile() throws IOException {
String s;
try {
fin = new FileInputStream(programPath + fileToParse);
buffRead = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(fin));
s = buffRead.readLine();
fin.close();
} finally {
if (fin != null {
fin.close()
}
}
return s
}
and then where you need it :
try {
loadedString = readFile();
} catch (IOException e) {
// handle issue gracefully
}