In this quick tutorial, we’re going to write the contents of a Reader to a File using plain Java, then Guava and finally the Apache Commons IO library.
This article is part of the “Java – Back to Basic” series here on Baeldung.
1. With Java
Let’s start with the simple Java solution:
@Test
public void givenUsingPlainJava_whenWritingReaderContentsToFile_thenCorrect()
throws IOException {
Reader initialReader = new StringReader("Some text");
int intValueOfChar;
StringBuilder buffer = new StringBuilder();
while ((intValueOfChar = initialReader.read()) != -1) {
buffer.append((char) intValueOfChar);
}
initialReader.close();
File targetFile = new File("src/test/resources/targetFile.txt");
targetFile.createNewFile();
Writer targetFileWriter = new FileWriter(targetFile);
targetFileWriter.write(buffer.toString());
targetFileWriter.close();
}
First – we’re reading the contents of the Reader into a String; then we’re simply writing the String to File.
2. With Guava
The Guava solution is simpler – we now have the API to deal with writing the reader to file:
@Test
public void givenUsingGuava_whenWritingReaderContentsToFile_thenCorrect()
throws IOException {
Reader initialReader = new StringReader("Some text");
File targetFile = new File("src/test/resources/targetFile.txt");
com.google.common.io.Files.touch(targetFile);
CharSink charSink = com.google.common.io.Files.
asCharSink(targetFile, Charset.defaultCharset(), FileWriteMode.APPEND);
charSink.writeFrom(initialReader);
initialReader.close();
}
3. With Apache Commons IO
And finally, the Commons IO solution – also using higher level APIs to read data from the Reader and write that data to file:
@Test
public void givenUsingCommonsIO_whenWritingReaderContentsToFile_thenCorrect()
throws IOException {
Reader initialReader = new CharSequenceReader("CharSequenceReader extends Reader");
File targetFile = new File("src/test/resources/targetFile.txt");
FileUtils.touch(targetFile);
byte[] buffer = IOUtils.toByteArray(initialReader);
FileUtils.writeByteArrayToFile(targetFile, buffer);
initialReader.close();
}
And there we have it – 3 simple solutions for writing the contents of a Reader to File. Make sure to check out the sample over on GitHub.