Read text file

This example will demonstrate how to read a text file which is a variation of text file into an array list. Using the popular song "You are my sunshine" lyrics stored in a text file we will use various techniques of reading the file in java using a buffered reader, file scanner, java 8 file stream, google guava and apache commons.

Setup

File constant

private static final String FILE_PATH = "youaremysunshine.txt";

File contents

"You Are My Sunshine"

You are my sunshine, my only sunshine
You make me happy when skies are grey
You never know, dear, how much I love you
Please don't take my sunshine away

...

Please don't take my sunshine away

Straight up Java

Buffered reader

Using a bufferedreader we will read a text file in java loading each line into an arraylist.

@Test
public void read_file_with_bufferedreader() {

    InputStream in = this.getClass().getClassLoader().getResourceAsStream(FILE_PATH);

    BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(in));

    List<String> lines = new ArrayList<String>();
    String line = null;
    try {
        while ((line = reader.readLine()) != null) {
            lines.add(line);
        }
    } catch (IOException e) {
        logger.error(e);
    } finally {
        try {
            reader.close();
        } catch (IOException e) {
            logger.error(e);
        }
    }

    assertTrue(lines.size() == 28);
}

File scanner

Using a scanner we will read a text file in java and while there is more lines we will add it to an arraylist.

@Test
public void read_text_file_with_scanner () {

    InputStream in = this.getClass().getClassLoader().getResourceAsStream(FILE_PATH);

    ArrayList<String> lines = new ArrayList<String>();
    Scanner fileScanner = new Scanner(new InputStreamReader(in));

    while (fileScanner.hasNextLine()){
        lines.add(fileScanner.nextLine());
    }

    assertTrue(lines.size() == 28);
}

Java 8

We will use the Files utility class introduced in java 7 and call lines which will read all lines of a file as a stream. Then we will convert the stream to an arralist.

@Test
public void read_text_file_with_java8() throws IOException {

    String filePathAsString = this.getClass().getClassLoader()
            .getResource(FILE_PATH).getFile();

    Path filePath = Paths.get(filePathAsString);

    List<String> lines = java.nio.file.Files.lines(filePath).collect(
            Collectors.toList());

    assertTrue(lines.size() == 28);
}

Google Guava

Using guava we will read a text file.

@Test
public void read_text_file_with_google_guava () {

    String filePath = this.getClass().getClassLoader().getResource(FILE_PATH).getFile();

    List<String> lines = null;
    try {
        lines = Files.readLines(new File(filePath), Charsets.UTF_8);
    } catch (IOException e) {
        logger.error(e);
    }
    assertTrue(lines.size() == 28);
}

Apache Commons

Using apache commons we will read the context of a text file into an arraylist.

@Test
public void read_file_with_apache_commons () {

    String filePath = this.getClass().getClassLoader().getResource(FILE_PATH).getFile();

    List<String> lines = null;
    try {
         lines = FileUtils.readLines(new File(filePath));
    } catch (IOException e) {
        logger.error(e);
    }

    assertTrue(lines.size() == 28);
}