Writing a serialized object to file garbaged? - java

try
{
File dataFile = new File("C:/Users/keatit/Desktop/players.txt");
if(!dataFile.exists())
{
dataFile.createNewFile();
}
FileOutputStream fos = new FileOutputStream("C:/Users/keatit/Desktop/players.txt");
ObjectOutputStream oos = new ObjectOutputStream(fos);
oos.writeObject(players);
oos.close();
}
catch(FileNotFoundException fnfex)
{
System.out.println(fnfex.getMessage());
}
catch(IOException ioex)
{
System.out.println(ioex.getMessage());
}
I have a class player which implement Serializable but when I write objects to files the text is messed up and looks like the following. Any help would be much appreciated. Thank you.
"¬í sr java.util.ArrayListxÒ™Ça I sizexp w sr players.playerÌ`~%×êòœ I ageL firstNamet Ljava/lang/String;xp t Trevorsq ~ t Michaelax"

This is binary serialization. It's not meant to be writing to a human-readable text file. For that, you should look into something like JSON or YAML. I'd strongly recommend against writing to a .txt file using ObjectOutputStream - it gives the wrong impression.
The point of binary serialization is to be able to deserialize it later with the same serialization protocol - so in this case you'd use ObjectInputStream. You should find that that is able to correctly deserialize the object stored in your file.
(Side-note: FileOutputStream will create a new file automatically if it doesn't exist - you don't need to do so yourself. Additionally, you should use a try-with-resources statement to clean up automatically, rather than just calling close() outside a finally block.)

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.

Split big object before persisting it to file

I have an object that occupies approximately 15GB in my java app's heap, and I need to keep it persistent between JVM restarts. I use ObjectOutputStream's writeObject method to write it to file on the disk every time interval. Since the writing process is very long (a few minutes) and causes some GC issues, I would like to split the object somehow to persist each part separately to a different file and not in a single action to a single file.
Is there a way to do this (and of course to retrieve it back from the files when I need it)?
FileOutputStream fos = null;
GZIPOutputStream gos = null;
ObjectOutputStream oos = null;
try {
fos = new FileOutputStream("some_path");
gos = new GZIPOutputStream(fos);
oos = new ObjectOutputStream(gos);
oos.writeObject(myLargeObject);
oos.flush();
gos.close();
fos.close();
} catch (Exception e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
You may want to take a look at this answer. The reverse process of recomposing the split files is nothing more than reading from each individual file and appending to a "master" one.

ObjectInputStream - reading large binary file - problems with memory

Before I proceed to my question : please note that I am not working on any client-server application that would require serialization, but the program I am trying to customize stores one big instance of one big class in a .dat file. I have read about this issue (memory leak in ObjectOutputStream and ObjectInputStream)and the fact that I could probably need to :
use the ObjectOutputStream.reset() method after writing the class instance in the .dat file, so that it doesn't hold the reference anymore;
re-write the code without using serialization;
split the file and read it in chunks;
change the JVM memory parameter by using -Xmx;
So, I was provided with one class that generates a language model and saves it with a .dat extension; the code was probably optimized for small model files (there are 2 model files provided as examples, both around 10MB ), but I generated a much larger model class, and it is around 40MB. Then, there is another class in another folder, totally independent on the first one, that uses this model, and the model has to be loaded using ObjectInputStream. Here comes the problem : a classic "OutOfMemoryError : Java heap space".
Writing the object:
try {
// Create an output stream to the file.
FileOutputStream file_output = new FileOutputStream (file);
ObjectOutputStream o = new ObjectOutputStream( file_output );
o.writeObject(this);
file_output.close ();
}
catch (IOException e) {
System.err.println ("IO exception = " + e );
}
Reading the object:
InputStream model = null;
ModelGeneration oRead = null;
ObjectInputStream p = null;
try {
model = new FileInputStream(filename);
BufferedInputStream buf = new BufferedInputStream(model);
p = new ObjectInputStream(buf);
oRead = (ModelGeneration) p.readObject();
p.reset();
} catch (IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
} catch (ClassNotFoundException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
} finally {
try {
model.close();
} catch (Exception e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
I tried to use the reset() method, but it is useless because we load only one instance of one class at a time, nothing else needed. This is why I can't split the file, too: only one class instance is stored in the .dat file.
Changing the heap space seems like a worse solution than optimizing the code.
I would really appreciate your advice on what I can do.
Btw the code is here : http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/uima/addons/trunk/Tagger/, I only implemented the required classes for a different language.
P.S. Works fine if I create a smaller model, but I would prefer the bigger one.

Is it possible to save BBM chat in a text file using J2ME in Blackberry

As far as i know, i can use javax.microedition.io.file.FileConnection for the required purpose. But i need an example.
Why i can't i use java.io.FileOutputStream, and use this piece of code instead:
FileOutputStream fout;
try
{
// Open an output stream
fout = new FileOutputStream ("myfile.txt");
// Print a line of text
new PrintStream(fout).println ("I'm making an app on android!");
// Close our output stream
fout.close();
}
// Catches any error conditions
catch (IOException e)
{
System.err.println ("Unable to write to file");
System.exit(-1);
}
Please explain. Thanks
The snipet you posted uses JavaSE classes, not available in BlackBerry.
You need to do this:
FileConnection fconn = (FileConnection)Connector.open("file:///CFCard/myfile.txt");
OutputStream os = fconn.openOutputStream();
os.write("I'm making an app on BB!".getBytes());
os.flush();
os.close();
fconn.close();
I've skipped exception control to make snippet less verbose, but you'll have to care about them as usual.

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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