I need to save a String to a text file using Java

Question

I am a beginner Java programmer. I am attempting to make a simple text editor. I have got the text from the text field into a variable that's a String, called "text".

My question is, how can I save the contents of the "text" variable to a text file?

Thank you!

Answer 1

Take a look at the Java File API

a quick example:

try {
    PrintStream out = new PrintStream(new FileOutputStream("filename.txt"));
    out.print(text);
    out.close();
} catch (IOException e) {
    e.printStackTrace();
}

Answer 2

Use FileUtils.writeStringToFile() from Apache Commons IO. No need to reinvent this particular wheel.

Answer 3

Just did something similar in my project. Use FileWriter will simplify part of your job. And here you can find nice tutorial.

 BufferedWriter writer = null;
 try
 {
  writer = new BufferedWriter( new FileWriter( yourfilename));
  writer.write( yourstring);

 }
 catch ( IOException e)
 {
 }
 finally
 {
  try
  {
   if ( writer != null)
    writer.close( );
  }
  catch ( IOException e)
  {
  }
     }

Answer 4

If you're simply outputting text, rather than any binary data, the following will work:

PrintWriter out = new PrintWriter("filename.txt");

Then, write your String to it, just like you would to any output stream:

out.println(text);

You'll need exception handling, as ever.

Edit: further simplified per Jonik's comments.

Answer 5

Apache Commons IO contains some great methods for doing this, in particular FileUtils contains the following method:

static void writeStringToFile(File file, String data)

which allows you to write text to a file in one method call:

FileUtils.writeStringToFile("test.txt", "Hello File");

You might also want to consider specifying the encoding for the file as well.

Answer 6

You can use the modify the code below to write your file from whatever class or function is handling the text. One wonders though why the world needs a new text editor...

import java.io.*;

public class Main {

public static void main(String[] args) {

    try {
        String str = "SomeMoreTextIsHere";
        File newTextFile = new File("C:/thetextfile.txt");

        FileWriter fw = new FileWriter(newTextFile);
        fw.write(str);
        fw.close();

    } catch (IOException iox) {
        //do stuff with exception
        iox.printStackTrace();
    }
}

}

Answer 7

Java Almanac is a good source for simple examples. It's a good place for beginners, even if it's a bit dated.

Answer 8

It's better to close the writer/outputstream in a finally block, just in case something happen

finally{
   if(writer != null){
     try{
        writer.flush();
        writer.close();
     }
     catch(IOException ioe){
         ioe.printStackTrace();
     }
   }
}