CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javafile-ioiotext-files
flyingfromchina
flyingfromchina

Reputation: 9691

How to append text to an existing file in Java?

I need to append text repeatedly to an existing file in Java. How do I do that?

Upvotes: 780

Views: 1259198

Answers (30)

Kip
Kip

Reputation: 109387

Are you doing this for logging purposes? If so there are several libraries for this. Two of the most popular are Log4j and Logback.

Java 7+

For a one-time task, the Files class makes this easy:

try {
    Files.write(Paths.get("myfile.txt"), "the text".getBytes(), StandardOpenOption.APPEND);
}catch (IOException e) {
    //exception handling left as an exercise for the reader
}

Careful: The above approach will throw a NoSuchFileException if the file does not already exist. It also does not append a newline automatically (which you often want when appending to a text file). Another approach is to pass both CREATE and APPEND options, which will create the file first if it doesn't already exist:

private void write(final String s) throws IOException {
    Files.writeString(
        Path.of(System.getProperty("java.io.tmpdir"), "filename.txt"),
        s + System.lineSeparator(),
        StandardOpenOption.CREATE, StandardOpenOption.APPEND
    );
}

However, if you will be writing to the same file many times, the above snippets must open and close the file on the disk many times, which is a slow operation. In this case, a BufferedWriter is faster:

try(FileWriter fw = new FileWriter("myfile.txt", true);
    BufferedWriter bw = new BufferedWriter(fw);
    PrintWriter out = new PrintWriter(bw))
{
    out.println("the text");
    //more code
    out.println("more text");
    //more code
} catch (IOException e) {
    //exception handling left as an exercise for the reader
}

Notes:

  • The second parameter to the FileWriter constructor will tell it to append to the file, rather than writing a new file. (If the file does not exist, it will be created.)
  • Using a BufferedWriter is recommended for an expensive writer (such as FileWriter).
  • Using a PrintWriter gives you access to println syntax that you're probably used to from System.out.
  • But the BufferedWriter and PrintWriter wrappers are not strictly necessary.

Older Java

try {
    PrintWriter out = new PrintWriter(new BufferedWriter(new FileWriter("myfile.txt", true)));
    out.println("the text");
    out.close();
} catch (IOException e) {
    //exception handling left as an exercise for the reader
}

Exception Handling

If you need robust exception handling for older Java, it gets very verbose:

FileWriter fw = null;
BufferedWriter bw = null;
PrintWriter out = null;
try {
    fw = new FileWriter("myfile.txt", true);
    bw = new BufferedWriter(fw);
    out = new PrintWriter(bw);
    out.println("the text");
    out.close();
} catch (IOException e) {
    //exception handling left as an exercise for the reader
}
finally {
    try {
        if(out != null)
            out.close();
    } catch (IOException e) {
        //exception handling left as an exercise for the reader
    }
    try {
        if(bw != null)
            bw.close();
    } catch (IOException e) {
        //exception handling left as an exercise for the reader
    }
    try {
        if(fw != null)
            fw.close();
    } catch (IOException e) {
        //exception handling left as an exercise for the reader
    }
}

Upvotes: 927

ripper234
ripper234

Reputation: 229988

Using Apache Commons 2.1:

import org.apache.logging.log4j.core.util.FileUtils;

FileUtils.writeStringToFile(file, "String to append", true);

Upvotes: 53

Steve Chambers
Steve Chambers

Reputation: 39384

Slightly expanding on Kip's answer, here is a simple Java 7+ method to append a new line to a file, creating it if it doesn't already exist:

try {
    final Path path = Paths.get("path/to/filename.txt");
    Files.write(path, Arrays.asList("New line to append"), StandardCharsets.UTF_8,
        Files.exists(path) ? StandardOpenOption.APPEND : StandardOpenOption.CREATE);
} catch (final IOException ioe) {
    // Add your own exception handling...
}

Further notes:

  1. The above uses the Files.write overload that writes lines of text to a file (i.e. similar to a println command). To just write text to the end (i.e. similar to a print command), an alternative Files.write overload can be used, passing in a byte array (e.g. "mytext".getBytes(StandardCharsets.UTF_8)).

  2. The CREATE option will only work if the specified directory already exists - if it doesn't, a NoSuchFileException is thrown. If required, the following code could be added after setting path to create the directory structure:

    Path pathParent = path.getParent();
if (!Files.exists(pathParent)) {
    Files.createDirectories(pathParent);
}

Upvotes: 37

Saikat
Saikat

Reputation: 16710

For JDK version >= 7

You can utilise this simple method which appends the given content to the specified file:

void appendToFile(String filePath, String content) {
  try (FileWriter fw = new FileWriter(filePath, true)) {
    fw.write(content + System.lineSeparator());
  } catch (IOException e) { 
    // TODO handle exception
  }
}

We are constructing a FileWriter object in append mode.

Upvotes: 0

etech
etech

Reputation: 2761

Shouldn't all of the answers here with try/catch blocks have the .close() pieces contained in a finally block?

Example for marked answer:

PrintWriter out = null;
try {
    out = new PrintWriter(new BufferedWriter(new FileWriter("writePath", true)));
    out.println("the text");
} catch (IOException e) {
    System.err.println(e);
} finally {
    if (out != null) {
        out.close();
    }
}

Also, as of Java 7, you can use a try-with-resources statement. No finally block is required for closing the declared resource(s) because it is handled automatically, and is also less verbose:

try(PrintWriter out = new PrintWriter(new BufferedWriter(new FileWriter("writePath", true)))) {
    out.println("the text");
} catch (IOException e) {
    System.err.println(e);
}

Upvotes: 75

Sawan Patwari
Sawan Patwari

Reputation: 19

1.7 Approach:

void appendToFile(String filePath, String content) throws IOException{

    Path path = Paths.get(filePath);

    try (BufferedWriter writer = 
            Files.newBufferedWriter(path, 
                    StandardOpenOption.APPEND)) {
        writer.newLine();
        writer.append(content);
    }

    /*
    //Alternative:
    try (BufferedWriter bWriter = 
            Files.newBufferedWriter(path, 
                    StandardOpenOption.WRITE, StandardOpenOption.APPEND);
            PrintWriter pWriter = new PrintWriter(bWriter)
            ) {
        pWriter.println();//to have println() style instead of newLine();   
        pWriter.append(content);//Also, bWriter.append(content);
    }*/
}

Upvotes: -1

Lefteris Bab
Lefteris Bab

Reputation: 787

java 7+

In my humble opinion since I am fan of plain java, I would suggest something that it is a combination of the aforementioned answers. Maybe I am late for the party. Here is the code:

 String sampleText = "test" +  System.getProperty("line.separator");
 Files.write(Paths.get(filePath), sampleText.getBytes(StandardCharsets.UTF_8), 
 StandardOpenOption.CREATE, StandardOpenOption.APPEND);

If the file doesn't exist, it creates it and if already exists it appends the sampleText to the existing file. Using this, saves you from adding unnecessary libs to your classpath.

Upvotes: 13

shriram
shriram

Reputation: 199

You can use the follong code to append the content in the file:

 String fileName="/home/shriram/Desktop/Images/"+"test.txt";
  FileWriter fw=new FileWriter(fileName,true);    
  fw.write("here will be you content to insert or append in file");    
  fw.close(); 
  FileWriter fw1=new FileWriter(fileName,true);    
 fw1.write("another content will be here to be append in the same file");    
 fw1.close();

Upvotes: -1

David Charles
David Charles

Reputation: 557

import java.io.BufferedWriter;
import java.io.FileWriter;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.PrintWriter;

public class Writer {


    public static void main(String args[]){
        doWrite("output.txt","Content to be appended to file");
    }

    public static void doWrite(String filePath,String contentToBeAppended){

       try(
            FileWriter fw = new FileWriter(filePath, true);
            BufferedWriter bw = new BufferedWriter(fw);
            PrintWriter out = new PrintWriter(bw)
          )
          {
            out.println(contentToBeAppended);
          }  
        catch( IOException e ){
        // File writing/opening failed at some stage.
        }

    }

}

Upvotes: 4

northpole
northpole

Reputation: 10346

You can use fileWriter with a flag set to true , for appending.

try
{
    String filename= "MyFile.txt";
    FileWriter fw = new FileWriter(filename,true); //the true will append the new data
    fw.write("add a line\n");//appends the string to the file
    fw.close();
}
catch(IOException ioe)
{
    System.err.println("IOException: " + ioe.getMessage());
}

Upvotes: 203

lfvv
lfvv

Reputation: 1629

In case you want to ADD SOME TEXT IN SPECIFIC LINES you can first read the whole file, append the text wherever you want and then overwrite everything like in the code below:

public static void addDatatoFile(String data1, String data2){


    String fullPath = "/home/user/dir/file.csv";

    File dir = new File(fullPath);
    List<String> l = new LinkedList<String>();

    try (BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(dir))) {
        String line;
        int count = 0;

        while ((line = br.readLine()) != null) {
            if(count == 1){
                //add data at the end of second line                    
                line += data1;
            }else if(count == 2){
                //add other data at the end of third line
                line += data2;
            }
            l.add(line);
            count++;
        }
        br.close();
    } catch (FileNotFoundException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    } catch (IOException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    }       
    createFileFromList(l, dir);
}

public static void createFileFromList(List<String> list, File f){

    PrintWriter writer;
    try {
        writer = new PrintWriter(f, "UTF-8");
        for (String d : list) {
            writer.println(d.toString());
        }
        writer.close();             
    } catch (FileNotFoundException | UnsupportedEncodingException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    }
}

Upvotes: 1

Mihir Patel
Mihir Patel

Reputation: 412

/**********************************************************************
 * it will write content to a specified  file
 * 
 * @param keyString
 * @throws IOException
 *********************************************************************/
public static void writeToFile(String keyString,String textFilePAth) throws IOException {
    // For output to file
    File a = new File(textFilePAth);

    if (!a.exists()) {
        a.createNewFile();
    }
    FileWriter fw = new FileWriter(a.getAbsoluteFile(), true);
    BufferedWriter bw = new BufferedWriter(fw);
    bw.append(keyString);
    bw.newLine();
    bw.close();
}// end of writeToFile()

Upvotes: -1

Nadhir Titaouine
Nadhir Titaouine

Reputation: 107

Try with bufferFileWriter.append, it works with me.

FileWriter fileWriter;
try {
    fileWriter = new FileWriter(file,true);
    BufferedWriter bufferFileWriter = new BufferedWriter(fileWriter);
    bufferFileWriter.append(obj.toJSONString());
    bufferFileWriter.newLine();
    bufferFileWriter.close();
} catch (IOException ex) {
    Logger.getLogger(JsonTest.class.getName()).log(Level.SEVERE, null, ex);
}

Upvotes: 3

shakti kumar
shakti kumar

Reputation: 51

FileOutputStream fos = new FileOutputStream("File_Name", true);
fos.write(data);

the true allows to append the data in the existing file. If we will write

FileOutputStream fos = new FileOutputStream("File_Name");

It will overwrite the existing file. So go for first approach.

Upvotes: 4

Shalini Baranwal
Shalini Baranwal

Reputation: 2988

This code will fulifil your need:

   FileWriter fw=new FileWriter("C:\\file.json",true);
   fw.write("ssssss");
   fw.close();

Upvotes: 1

Rahbee Alvee
Rahbee Alvee

Reputation: 1994

This can be done in one line of code. Hope this helps :)

Files.write(Paths.get(fileName), msg.getBytes(), StandardOpenOption.APPEND);

Upvotes: 9

userAsh
userAsh

Reputation: 143

My answer:

JFileChooser chooser= new JFileChooser();
chooser.showOpenDialog(chooser);
File file = chooser.getSelectedFile();
String Content = "What you want to append to file";

try 
{
    RandomAccessFile random = new RandomAccessFile(file, "rw");
    long length = random.length();
    random.setLength(length + 1);
    random.seek(random.length());
    random.writeBytes(Content);
    random.close();
} 
catch (Exception exception) {
    //exception handling
}

Upvotes: -1

akhil_mittal
akhil_mittal

Reputation: 24157

If we are using Java 7 and above and also know the content to be added (appended) to the file we can make use of newBufferedWriter method in NIO package.

public static void main(String[] args) {
    Path FILE_PATH = Paths.get("C:/temp", "temp.txt");
    String text = "\n Welcome to Java 8";

    //Writing to the file temp.txt
    try (BufferedWriter writer = Files.newBufferedWriter(FILE_PATH, StandardCharsets.UTF_8, StandardOpenOption.APPEND)) {
        writer.write(text);
    } catch (IOException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    }
}

There are few points to note:

  1. It is always a good habit to specify charset encoding and for that we have constant in class StandardCharsets.
  2. The code uses try-with-resource statement in which resources are automatically closed after the try.

Though OP has not asked but just in case we want to search for lines having some specific keyword e.g. confidential we can make use of stream APIs in Java:

//Reading from the file the first line which contains word "confidential"
try {
    Stream<String> lines = Files.lines(FILE_PATH);
    Optional<String> containsJava = lines.filter(l->l.contains("confidential")).findFirst();
    if(containsJava.isPresent()){
        System.out.println(containsJava.get());
    }
} catch (IOException e) {
    e.printStackTrace();
}

Upvotes: 3

BullyWiiPlaza
BullyWiiPlaza

Reputation: 19185

The following method let's you append text to some file:

private void appendToFile(String filePath, String text)
{
    PrintWriter fileWriter = null;

    try
    {
        fileWriter = new PrintWriter(new BufferedWriter(new FileWriter(
                filePath, true)));

        fileWriter.println(text);
    } catch (IOException ioException)
    {
        ioException.printStackTrace();
    } finally
    {
        if (fileWriter != null)
        {
            fileWriter.close();
        }
    }
}

Alternatively using FileUtils:

public static void appendToFile(String filePath, String text) throws IOException
{
    File file = new File(filePath);

    if(!file.exists())
    {
        file.createNewFile();
    }

    String fileContents = FileUtils.readFileToString(file);

    if(file.length() != 0)
    {
        fileContents = fileContents.concat(System.lineSeparator());
    }

    fileContents = fileContents.concat(text);

    FileUtils.writeStringToFile(file, fileContents);
}

It is not efficient but works fine. Line breaks are handled correctly and a new file is created if one didn't exist yet.

Upvotes: 0

Tsolak Barseghyan
Tsolak Barseghyan

Reputation: 1064

In Java-7 it also can be done such kind:

import java.nio.file.Files;
import java.nio.file.Path;
import java.nio.file.Paths;
import java.nio.file.StandardOpenOption;

//---------------------

Path filePath = Paths.get("someFile.txt");
if (!Files.exists(filePath)) {
    Files.createFile(filePath);
}
Files.write(filePath, "Text to be added".getBytes(), StandardOpenOption.APPEND);

Upvotes: 13

Emily L.
Emily L.

Reputation: 5931

Make sure the stream gets properly closed in all scenarios.

It's a bit alarming how many of these answers leave the file handle open in case of an error. The answer https://stackoverflow.com/a/15053443/2498188 is on the money but only because BufferedWriter() cannot throw. If it could then an exception would leave the FileWriter object open.

A more general way of doing this that doesn't care if BufferedWriter() can throw:

  PrintWriter out = null;
  BufferedWriter bw = null;
  FileWriter fw = null;
  try{
     fw = new FileWriter("outfilename", true);
     bw = new BufferedWriter(fw);
     out = new PrintWriter(bw);
     out.println("the text");
  }
  catch( IOException e ){
     // File writing/opening failed at some stage.
  }
  finally{
     try{
        if( out != null ){
           out.close(); // Will close bw and fw too
        }
        else if( bw != null ){
           bw.close(); // Will close fw too
        }
        else if( fw != null ){
           fw.close();
        }
        else{
           // Oh boy did it fail hard! :3
        }
     }
     catch( IOException e ){
        // Closing the file writers failed for some obscure reason
     }
  }

Edit:

As of Java 7, the recommended way is to use "try with resources" and let the JVM deal with it:

  try(    FileWriter fw = new FileWriter("outfilename", true);
          BufferedWriter bw = new BufferedWriter(fw);
          PrintWriter out = new PrintWriter(bw)){
     out.println("the text");
  }  
  catch( IOException e ){
      // File writing/opening failed at some stage.
  }

Upvotes: 22

mikeyreilly
mikeyreilly

Reputation: 6923

Better to use try-with-resources then all that pre-java 7 finally business

static void appendStringToFile(Path file, String s) throws IOException  {
    try (BufferedWriter out = Files.newBufferedWriter(file, StandardCharsets.UTF_8, StandardOpenOption.APPEND)) {
        out.append(s);
        out.newLine();
    }
}

Upvotes: 3

aashima
aashima

Reputation: 1203

You can also try this :

JFileChooser c= new JFileChooser();
c.showOpenDialog(c);
File write_file = c.getSelectedFile();
String Content = "Writing into file"; //what u would like to append to the file



try 
{
    RandomAccessFile raf = new RandomAccessFile(write_file, "rw");
    long length = raf.length();
    //System.out.println(length);
    raf.setLength(length + 1); //+ (integer value) for spacing
    raf.seek(raf.length());
    raf.writeBytes(Content);
    raf.close();
} 
catch (Exception e) {
    //any exception handling method of ur choice
}

Upvotes: 3

abSiddique
abSiddique

Reputation: 12335

Library

import java.io.BufferedWriter;
import java.io.File;
import java.io.FileWriter;
import java.io.IOException;

Code

public void append()
{
    try
    {
        String path = "D:/sample.txt";

        File file = new File(path);

        FileWriter fileWriter = new FileWriter(file,true);

        BufferedWriter bufferFileWriter  = new BufferedWriter(fileWriter);

        fileWriter.append("Sample text in the file to append");

        bufferFileWriter.close();

        System.out.println("User Registration Completed");

    }catch(Exception ex)
    {
        System.out.println(ex);
    }
}

Upvotes: 2

Netcfmx
Netcfmx

Reputation: 121

Create a function anywhere in your project and simply call that function where ever you need it.

Guys you got to remember that you guys are calling active threads that you are not calling asynchronously and since it would likely be a good 5 to 10 pages to get it done right. Why not spend more time on your project and forget about writing anything already written. Properly

    //Adding a static modifier would make this accessible anywhere in your app

    public Logger getLogger()
    {
       return java.util.logging.Logger.getLogger("MyLogFileName");
    }
    //call the method anywhere and append what you want to log 
    //Logger class will take care of putting timestamps for you
    //plus the are ansychronously done so more of the 
    //processing power will go into your application

    //from inside a function body in the same class ...{...

    getLogger().log(Level.INFO,"the text you want to append");

    ...}...
    /*********log file resides in server root log files********/

three lines of code two really since the third actually appends text. :P

Upvotes: 2

Tom Drake
Tom Drake

Reputation: 537

I might suggest the apache commons project. This project already provides a framework for doing what you need (i.e. flexible filtering of collections).

Upvotes: 1

icasdri
icasdri

Reputation: 106

Using java.nio.Files along with java.nio.file.StandardOpenOption

    PrintWriter out = null;
    BufferedWriter bufWriter;

    try{
        bufWriter =
            Files.newBufferedWriter(
                Paths.get("log.txt"),
                Charset.forName("UTF8"),
                StandardOpenOption.WRITE, 
                StandardOpenOption.APPEND,
                StandardOpenOption.CREATE);
        out = new PrintWriter(bufWriter, true);
    }catch(IOException e){
        //Oh, no! Failed to create PrintWriter
    }

    //After successful creation of PrintWriter
    out.println("Text to be appended");

    //After done writing, remember to close!
    out.close();

This creates a BufferedWriter using Files, which accepts StandardOpenOption parameters, and an auto-flushing PrintWriter from the resultant BufferedWriter. PrintWriter's println() method, can then be called to write to the file.

The StandardOpenOption parameters used in this code: opens the file for writing, only appends to the file, and creates the file if it does not exist.

Paths.get("path here") can be replaced with new File("path here").toPath(). And Charset.forName("charset name") can be modified to accommodate the desired Charset.

Upvotes: 5

SharkAlley
SharkAlley

Reputation: 11659

FileOutputStream stream = new FileOutputStream(path, true);
try {

    stream.write(

        string.getBytes("UTF-8") // Choose your encoding.

    );

} finally {
    stream.close();
}

Then catch an IOException somewhere upstream.

Upvotes: 2

dantuch
dantuch

Reputation: 9283

Sample, using Guava:

File to = new File("C:/test/test.csv");

for (int i = 0; i < 42; i++) {
    CharSequence from = "some string" + i + "\n";
    Files.append(from, to, Charsets.UTF_8);
}

Upvotes: 4

Benjamin Varghese
Benjamin Varghese

Reputation: 103

    String str;
    String path = "C:/Users/...the path..../iin.txt"; // you can input also..i created this way :P

    BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(System.in));
    PrintWriter pw = new PrintWriter(new FileWriter(path, true));

    try 
    {
       while(true)
        {
            System.out.println("Enter the text : ");
            str = br.readLine();
            if(str.equalsIgnoreCase("exit"))
                break;
            else
                pw.println(str);
        }
    } 
    catch (Exception e) 
    {
        //oh noes!
    }
    finally
    {
        pw.close();         
    }

this will do what you intend for..

Upvotes: 3

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