How do I create a file and write to it in Java?

Question

What's the simplest way to create and write to a (text) file in Java?

Answer 1

Using Google's Guava library, we can create and write to a file very easily.

package com.zetcode.writetofileex;

import com.google.common.io.Files;
import java.io.File;
import java.io.IOException;

public class WriteToFileEx {

    public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {

        String fileName = "fruits.txt";
        File file = new File(fileName);

        String content = "banana, orange, lemon, apple, plum";

        Files.write(content.getBytes(), file);
    }
}

The example creates a new fruits.txt file in the project root directory.

Answer 2

If you already have the content you want to write to the file (and not generated on the fly), the java.nio.file.Files addition in Java 7 as part of native I/O provides the simplest and most efficient way to achieve your goals.

Basically creating and writing to a file is one line only, moreover one simple method call!

The following example creates and writes to 6 different files to showcase how it can be used:

Charset utf8 = StandardCharsets.UTF_8;
List<String> lines = Arrays.asList("1st line", "2nd line");
byte[] data = {1, 2, 3, 4, 5};

try {
    Files.write(Paths.get("file1.bin"), data);
    Files.write(Paths.get("file2.bin"), data,
            StandardOpenOption.CREATE, StandardOpenOption.APPEND);
    Files.write(Paths.get("file3.txt"), "content".getBytes());
    Files.write(Paths.get("file4.txt"), "content".getBytes(utf8));
    Files.write(Paths.get("file5.txt"), lines, utf8);
    Files.write(Paths.get("file6.txt"), lines, utf8,
            StandardOpenOption.CREATE, StandardOpenOption.APPEND);
} catch (IOException e) {
    e.printStackTrace();
}

Answer 3

public class Program {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        String text = "Hello world";
        BufferedWriter output = null;
        try {
            File file = new File("example.txt");
            output = new BufferedWriter(new FileWriter(file));
            output.write(text);
        } catch ( IOException e ) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        } finally {
          if ( output != null ) {
            output.close();
          }
        }
    }
}

Answer 4

I think this is the shortest way:

FileWriter fr = new FileWriter("your_file_name.txt"); // After '.' write
// your file extention (".txt" in this case)
fr.write("Things you want to write into the file"); // Warning: this will REPLACE your old file content!
fr.close();

Answer 5

Here we are entering a string into a text file:

String content = "This is the content to write into a file";
File file = new File("filename.txt");
FileWriter fw = new FileWriter(file.getAbsoluteFile());
BufferedWriter bw = new BufferedWriter(fw);
bw.write(content);
bw.close(); // Be sure to close BufferedWriter

We can easily create a new file and add content into it.

Answer 6

The simplest way I can find:

Path sampleOutputPath = Paths.get("/tmp/testfile")
try (BufferedWriter writer = Files.newBufferedWriter(sampleOutputPath)) {
    writer.write("Hello, world!");
}

It will probably only work for 1.7+.