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Read/Write Bytes to and From a File Using Only Java.IO

How can we write a byte array to a file (and read it back from that file) in Java?
Yes, we all know there are already lots of questions like that, but they get very messy and subjective due to the fact that there are so many ways to accomplish this task.
So let's reduce the scope of the question:
Domain:
Android / Java
What we want:
Fast (as possible)
Bug-free (in a rigidly meticulous way)
What we are not doing:
Third-party libraries
Any libraries that require Android API later than 23 (Marshmallow)
(So, that rules out Apache Commons, Google Guava, Java.nio, and leaves us with good ol' Java.io)
What we need:
Byte array is always exactly the same (content and size) after going through the write-then-read process
Write method only requires two arguments: File file, and byte[] data
Read method returns a byte[] and only requires one argument: File file
In my particular case, these methods are private (not a library) and are NOT responsible for the following, (but if you want to create a more universal solution that applies to a wider audience, go for it):
Thread-safety (file will not be accessed by more than one process at once)
File being null
File pointing to non-existent location
Lack of permissions at the file location
Byte array being too large
Byte array being null
Dealing with any "index," "length," or "append" arguments/capabilities
So... we're sort of in search of the definitive bullet-proof code that people in the future can assume is safe to use because your answer has lots of up-votes and there are no comments that say, "That might crash if..."
This is what I have so far:
Write Bytes To File:
private void writeBytesToFile(final File file, final byte[] data) {
try {
FileOutputStream fos = new FileOutputStream(file);
fos.write(data);
fos.close();
} catch (Exception e) {
Log.i("XXX", "BUG: " + e);
}
}
Read Bytes From File:
private byte[] readBytesFromFile(final File file) {
RandomAccessFile raf;
byte[] bytesToReturn = new byte[(int) file.length()];
try {
raf = new RandomAccessFile(file, "r");
raf.readFully(bytesToReturn);
} catch (Exception e) {
Log.i("XXX", "BUG: " + e);
}
return bytesToReturn;
}
From what I've read, the possible Exceptions are:
FileNotFoundException : Am I correct that this should not happen as long as the file path being supplied was derived using Android's own internal tools and/or if the app was tested properly?
IOException : I don't really know what could cause this... but I'm assuming that there's no way around it if it does.
So with that in mind... can these methods be improved or replaced, and if so, with what?

It looks like these are going to be core utility/library methods which must run on Android API 23 or later.
Concerning library methods, I find it best to make no assumptions on how applications will use these methods. In some cases the applications may want to receive checked IOExceptions (because data from a file must exist for the application to work), in other cases the applications may not even care if data is not available (because data from a file is only cache that is also available from a primary source).
When it comes to I/O operations, there is never a guarantee that operations will succeed (e.g. user dropping phone in the toilet). The library should reflect that and give the application a choice on how to handle errors.
To optimize I/O performance always assume the "happy path" and catch errors to figure out what went wrong. This is counter intuitive to normal programming but essential in dealing with storage I/O. For example, just checking if a file exists before reading from a file can make your application twice as slow - all these kind of I/O actions add up fast to slow your application down. Just assume the file exists and if you get an error, only then check if the file exists.
So given those ideas, the main functions could look like:
public static void writeFile(File f, byte[] data) throws FileNotFoundException, IOException {
try (FileOutputStream out = new FileOutputStream(f)) {
out.write(data);
}
}
public static int readFile(File f, byte[] data) throws FileNotFoundException, IOException {
try (FileInputStream in = new FileInputStream(f)) {
return in.read(data);
}
}
Notes about the implementation:
The methods can also throw runtime-exceptions like NullPointerExceptions - these methods are never going to be "bug free".
I do not think buffering is needed/wanted in the methods above since only one native call is done
(see also here).
The application now also has the option to read only the beginning of a file.
To make it easier for an application to read a file, an additional method can be added. But note that it is up to the library to detect any errors and report them to the application since the application itself can no longer detect those errors.
public static byte[] readFile(File f) throws FileNotFoundException, IOException {
int fsize = verifyFileSize(f);
byte[] data = new byte[fsize];
int read = readFile(f, data);
verifyAllDataRead(f, data, read);
return data;
}
private static int verifyFileSize(File f) throws IOException {
long fsize = f.length();
if (fsize > Integer.MAX_VALUE) {
throw new IOException("File size (" + fsize + " bytes) for " + f.getName() + " too large.");
}
return (int) fsize;
}
public static void verifyAllDataRead(File f, byte[] data, int read) throws IOException {
if (read != data.length) {
throw new IOException("Expected to read " + data.length
+ " bytes from file " + f.getName() + " but got only " + read + " bytes from file.");
}
}
This implementation adds another hidden point of failure: OutOfMemory at the point where the new data array is created.
To accommodate applications further, additional methods can be added to help with different scenario's. For example, let's say the application really does not want to deal with checked exceptions:
public static void writeFileData(File f, byte[] data) {
try {
writeFile(f, data);
} catch (Exception e) {
fileExceptionToRuntime(e);
}
}
public static byte[] readFileData(File f) {
try {
return readFile(f);
} catch (Exception e) {
fileExceptionToRuntime(e);
}
return null;
}
public static int readFileData(File f, byte[] data) {
try {
return readFile(f, data);
} catch (Exception e) {
fileExceptionToRuntime(e);
}
return -1;
}
private static void fileExceptionToRuntime(Exception e) {
if (e instanceof RuntimeException) { // e.g. NullPointerException
throw (RuntimeException)e;
}
RuntimeException re = new RuntimeException(e.toString());
re.setStackTrace(e.getStackTrace());
throw re;
}
The method fileExceptionToRuntime is a minimal implementation, but it shows the idea here.
The library could also help an application to troubleshoot when an error does occur. For example, a method canReadFile(File f) could check if a file exists and is readable and is not too large. The application could call such a function after a file-read fails and check for common reasons why a file cannot be read. The same can be done for writing to a file.

Although you can't use third party libraries, you can still read their code and learn from their experience. In Google Guava for example, you usually read a file into bytes like this:
FileInputStream reader = new FileInputStream("test.txt");
byte[] result = ByteStreams.toByteArray(reader);
The core implementation of this is toByteArrayInternal. Before calling this, you should check:
A not null file is passed (NullPointerException)
The file exists (FileNotFoundException)
After that, it is reduced to handling an InputStream and this where IOExceptions come from. When reading streams a lot of things out of the control of your application can go wrong (bad sectors and other hardware issues, mal-functioning drivers, OS access rights) and manifest themselves with an IOException.
I am copying here the implementation:
private static final int BUFFER_SIZE = 8192;
/** Max array length on JVM. */
private static final int MAX_ARRAY_LEN = Integer.MAX_VALUE - 8;
private static byte[] toByteArrayInternal(InputStream in, Queue<byte[]> bufs, int totalLen)
throws IOException {
// Starting with an 8k buffer, double the size of each successive buffer. Buffers are retained
// in a deque so that there's no copying between buffers while reading and so all of the bytes
// in each new allocated buffer are available for reading from the stream.
for (int bufSize = BUFFER_SIZE;
totalLen < MAX_ARRAY_LEN;
bufSize = IntMath.saturatedMultiply(bufSize, 2)) {
byte[] buf = new byte[Math.min(bufSize, MAX_ARRAY_LEN - totalLen)];
bufs.add(buf);
int off = 0;
while (off < buf.length) {
// always OK to fill buf; its size plus the rest of bufs is never more than MAX_ARRAY_LEN
int r = in.read(buf, off, buf.length - off);
if (r == -1) {
return combineBuffers(bufs, totalLen);
}
off += r;
totalLen += r;
}
}
// read MAX_ARRAY_LEN bytes without seeing end of stream
if (in.read() == -1) {
// oh, there's the end of the stream
return combineBuffers(bufs, MAX_ARRAY_LEN);
} else {
throw new OutOfMemoryError("input is too large to fit in a byte array");
}
}
As you can see most of the logic has to do with reading the file in chunks. This is to handle situations, where you don't know the size of the InputStream, before starting reading. In your case, you only need to read files and you should be able to know the length beforehand, so this complexity could be avoided.
The other check is OutOfMemoryException. In standard Java the limit is too big, however in Android, it will be a much smaller value. You should check, before trying to read the file that there is enough memory available.

Copied DocumentFile has different siize and hash to original

I'm attempting to copy / duplicate a DocumentFile in an Android application, but upon inspecting the created duplicate, it does not appear to be exactly the same as the original (which is causing a problem, because I need to do an MD5 check on both files the next time a copy is called, so as to avoid overwriting the same files).
The process is as follows:
User selects a file from a ACTION_OPEN_DOCUMENT_TREE
Source file's type is obtained
New DocumentFile in target location is initialised
Contents of first file is duplicated into second file
The initial stages are done with the following code:
// Get the source file's type
String sourceFileType = MimeTypeMap.getSingleton().getExtensionFromMimeType(contextRef.getContentResolver().getType(file.getUri()));
// Create the new (empty) file
DocumentFile newFile = targetLocation.createFile(sourceFileType, file.getName());
// Copy the file
CopyBufferedFile(new BufferedInputStream(contextRef.getContentResolver().openInputStream(file.getUri())), new BufferedOutputStream(contextRef.getContentResolver().openOutputStream(newFile.getUri())));
The main copy process is done using the following snippet:
void CopyBufferedFile(BufferedInputStream bufferedInputStream, BufferedOutputStream bufferedOutputStream)
{
// Duplicate the contents of the temporary local File to the DocumentFile
try
{
byte[] buf = new byte[1024];
bufferedInputStream.read(buf);
do
{
bufferedOutputStream.write(buf);
}
while(bufferedInputStream.read(buf) != -1);
}
catch (IOException e)
{
e.printStackTrace();
}
finally
{
try
{
if (bufferedInputStream != null) bufferedInputStream.close();
if (bufferedOutputStream != null) bufferedOutputStream.close();
}
catch (IOException e)
{
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
}
The problem that I'm facing, is that although the file copies successfully and is usable (it's a picture of a cat, and it's still a picture of a cat in the destination), it is slightly different.
The file size has changed from 2261840 to 2262016 (+176)
The MD5 hash has changed completely
Is there something wrong with my copying code that is causing the file to change slightly?
Thanks in advance.

Your copying code is incorrect. It is assuming (incorrectly) that each call to read will either return buffer.length bytes or return -1.
What you should do is capture the number of bytes read in a variable each time, and then write exactly that number of bytes. Your code for closing the streams is verbose and (in theory1) buggy as well.
Here is a rewrite that addresses both of those issues, and some others as well.
void copyBufferedFile(BufferedInputStream bufferedInputStream,
BufferedOutputStream bufferedOutputStream)
throws IOException
{
try (BufferedInputStream in = bufferedInputStream;
BufferedOutputStream out = bufferedOutputStream)
{
byte[] buf = new byte[1024];
int nosRead;
while ((nosRead = in.read(buf)) != -1) // read this carefully ...
{
out.write(buf, 0, nosRead);
}
}
}
As you can see, I have gotten rid of the bogus "catch and squash exception" handlers, and fixed the resource leak using Java 7+ try with resources.
There are still a couple of issues:
It is better for the copy function to take file name strings (or File or Path objects) as parameters and be responsible for opening the streams.
Given that you are doing block reads and writes, there is little value in using buffered streams. (Indeed, it might conceivably be making the I/O slower.) It would be better to use plain streams and make the buffer the same size as the default buffer size used by the Buffered* classes .... or larger.
If you are really concerned about performance, try using transferFrom as described here:
https://www.journaldev.com/861/java-copy-file
1 - In theory, if the bufferedInputStream.close() throws an exception, the bufferedOutputStream.close() call will be skipped. In practice, it is unlikely that closing an input stream will throw an exception. But either way, the try with resource approach will deals with this correctly, and far more concisely.

Liferay Concurrent FileEntry Upload

Problem Statement :
In liferay i have to import a zip file in to some folder in liferay cms, So far I had implemented serial unzipping of the zip file create it's folder and then it's files. The problem here is that the whole process takes a lot of time. So I had to use parallel approach in creating folders and creating files.
My Solution :
I have used a java java.util.concurrent.ExecutorService to create a Executors.newFixedThreadPool(NTHREDS) where NTHREDS is the number of threads to be run in parallel (say 5)
I read all the folder paths from the zip and placed , list of zip
entires (files) against folder path as a key in HashMap
Traversed all keys in the map and created folders serially
Now traversed the list of zip entries (files) from map and passed to a thread worker,one file for each worker, these workers are then sent to
ExecutorService to Execute
So far i didn't find any significant reduction in time of the whole process, am i moving in the correct direction? Does liferay support concurrent file addition? What am I doing wrong?
I will be much thankful for any help in this regard
below is my code
imports
...
...
public class TestImportZip {
private static final int NTHREDS = 5;
ExecutorService executor = null;
...
...
....
Map<String,Folder> folders = new HashMap<String,Folder>();
File zipsFile = null;
public TestImportZip(............,File zipFile, .){
.
.
this.zipsFile = zipFile;
this.executor = Executors.newFixedThreadPool(NTHREDS);
}
// From here the process starts
public void importZip() {
Map<String,List<ZipEntry>> foldersMap = new HashMap<String, List<ZipEntry>>();
try (ZipFile zipFile = new ZipFile(zipsFile)) {
zipFile.stream().forEach(entry -> {
String entryName = entry.getName();
if(entryName.contains("/")) {
String key = entryName.substring(0, entryName.lastIndexOf("/"));
List<ZipEntry> zipEntries = foldersMap.get(key);
if(zipEntries == null){
zipEntries = new ArrayList<>();
}
zipEntries.add(entry);
foldersMap.put(key,zipEntries);
}
});
createFolders(foldersMap.keySet());
createFiles(foldersMap);
} catch (IOException e) {
// TODO Auto-generated catch block
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
private void createFolders(Set<String> folderPathSets) {
// create folder and put the folder in map
.
.
.
folders.put(folderPath,folder);
}
private void createFiles(Map<String, List<ZipEntry>> foldersMap) {
.
.
.
//Traverse all the files from all the list in map and send them to worker
createFileWorker(folderPath,zipEntry);
}
private void createFileWorker(String folderPath,ZipEntry zipEntry) {
CreateEntriesWorker cfw = new CreateEntriesWorker(folderPath, zipEntry);
executor.execute(cfw);
}
class CreateEntriesWorker implements Runnable{
Folder folder = null;
ZipEntry entryToCreate = null;
public CreateEntriesWorker(String folderPath, ZipEntry zipEntry){
this.entryToCreate = zipEntry;
// get folder from already created folder map
this.folder = folders.get(folderPath);
}
public void run() {
if(this.folder != null) {
long startTime = System.currentTimeMillis();
try (ZipFile zipFile = new ZipFile(zipsFile)) {
InputStream inputStream = zipFile.getInputStream(entryToCreate);
try{
String name = entryToCreate.getName();
// created file entry here
}catch(Exception e){
}finally{
if(inputStream != null)
inputStream.close();
}
} catch (IOException e) {
// TODO Auto-generated catch block
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
}
}
}

Your simplified code does not contain any Liferay reference that I recognize. The description you provide gives a hint that you're trying to optimize some code, but don't get any better performance out of your try. This typically is a sign that you're trying to optimize the wrong aspect of the problem (or it's already quite optimized).
You'll need to determine the actual bottleneck of your operation in order to know if it's feasible to optimize. There's a common saying that "premature optimization is the root of all evil". What does it mean?
I'll completely make up numbers here - don't quote me on them: They're freely invented for illustration purposes. Let's say, that your operation of adding the contents of a Zip file to Liferay's repository is distributed to the following percentages of operational resources:
4% zip file decoding/decompressing
6% file I/O for zip operations and temporary files
10% database operation for storing the files
60% for extracting text-only from word, pdf, excel and other files stored within the zip file in order to index the document in the full-text index
20% overhead of the full-text indexing library for putting together the index.
Suppose you're optimizing the zip file decoding/decompressing - what overall improvement of numbers can you expect?
While my numbers are made up: If your optimizations do not have any result, I'd recommend to reverse them, measure where you need to optimize and go after that place (or accept it and upgrade your hardware if that place is out of reach).
Run those numbers for CPU, I/O, memory and other potential bottlenecks. Identify your actual bottleneck #1, fix it, measure again. You'll see that bottleneck #2 has gotten a promotion. Rinse repeat until you're happy

java: reading large file with charset

My file is 14GB and I would like to read line by line and will be export to excel file.
As the file include different language, such as Chinese and English,
I tried to use FileInputStream with UTF-16 for reading data,
but result in java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Java heap space
I have tried to increase the heap space but problem still exist
How should I change my file reading code?
createExcel(); //open a excel file
try {
//success but cannot read and output for different language
//br = new BufferedReader(
// new FileReader("C:\\Users\\brian_000\\Desktop\\appdatafile.json"));
//result in java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Java heap space
br = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(
new FileInputStream("C:\\Users\\brian_000\\Desktop\\appdatafile.json"),
"UTF-16"));
} catch (FileNotFoundException e) {
// TODO Auto-generated catch block
e.printStackTrace();
} catch (UnsupportedEncodingException e) {
// TODO Auto-generated catch block
e.printStackTrace();
}
System.out.println("cann be print");
String line;
int i=0;
try {
while ((line = br.readLine()) != null) {
// process the line.
try{
System.out.println("cannot be print");
//some statement for storing the data in variables.
//a function for writing the variable into excel
writeToExcel(platform,kind,title,shareUrl,contentRating,userRatingCount,averageUserRating
,marketLanguage,pricing
,majorVersionNumber,releaseDate,downloadsCount);
}
catch(com.google.gson.JsonSyntaxException exception){
System.out.println("error");
}
// trying to get the first 1000rows
i++;
if(i==1000){
br.close();
break;
}
}
} catch (IOException e) {
// TODO Auto-generated catch block
e.printStackTrace();
}
closeExcel();
public static void writeToExcel(String platform,String kind,String title,String shareUrl,String contentRating,String userRatingCount,String averageUserRating
,String marketLanguage,String pricing,String majorVersionNumber,String releaseDate,String downloadsCount){
currentRow++;
System.out.println(currentRow);
if(currentRow>1000000){
currentsheet++;
sheet = workbook.createSheet("apps"+currentsheet, 0);
createFristRow();
currentRow=1;
}
try {
//character id
Label label = new Label(0, currentRow, String.valueOf(currentRow), cellFormat);
sheet.addCell(label);
//12 of statements for write the data to excel
label = new Label(1, currentRow, platform, cellFormat);
sheet.addCell(label);
} catch (WriteException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}

Excel, UTF-16
As mentioned, the problem is likely caused by the Excel document construction. Try whether UTF-8 yields a lesser size; for instance Chinese HTML still is better compressed with UTF-8 rather than UTF-16 because of the many ASCII chars.
Object creation java
You can share common small Strings. Useful for String.valueOf(row) and such. Cache only strings with a small length. I assume the cellFormat to be fixed.
DIY with xlsx
Excel builds a costly DOM.
If CSV text (with a Unicode BOM marker) is no options (you could give it the extension .xls to be opened by Excel), try generating an xslx.
Create an example workbook in xslx.
This is a zip format you can process in java easiest with a zip filesystem.
For Excel there is a content XML and a shared XML, sharing cell values with an index from content to shared strings.
Then no overflow happens as you write buffer-wise.
Or use a JDBC driver for Excel. (No recent experience on my side, maybe JDBC/ODBC.)
Best
Excel is hard to use with that much data. Consider more effort using a database, or write every N rows in a proper Excel file. Maybe you can later import them with java in one document. (I doubt it.)

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.