how to handle files?

[sayan751]

hi,
i dealt with ".txt" files in java.
can some one please tell me how to deal with binary files(such as image or audio or a office document etc.) or at least refer some good tutorial. i searched the net, all they says about streaming.what the streaming is all about?
i am waiting for a brief and resourceful tutorial.
thanx

[OrangeDog]

Depends what the file is and what you want to do with it. Image? Audio? Office document?

[sayan751]

thanx for your reply.

actually i intend to upload a file from a client machine to server, and i have worked with ".txt" files(using the readLine() method to read from the source file and write it down in another .txt file in the server).

but the same can't be applied to a image file or a audio file(i tried to do but it is not useful). so my question is what is the idea behind general file handling?

[Singing Boyo]

Well, you could read them as ImageIcon's or the audio equivalent (Sound API is not my strong point) and send/read those using Object streams, but I'm not sure how you would go about writing them to the server.

[toadaly]

For general binary files, the easiest approach is to use FileInputStream and FileOutputStream.

For example, the following will copy from one file to another:

FileInputStream in = new FileInputStream(new File("inFile.bin"));
FileOutputStream out = new FileOutputStream(new File("outFile.bin"));

byte[] bytes = new byte[65536];

try {

while(true) {
  int numRead = in.read(bytes);

  if(numRead == -1)
    break;

  out.write(bytes, 0, numRead);
}

} catch (IOException ioEx) {
... do something
} finally {
  try {
    in.close();
  } catch (Throwable t) {}

  try {
    out.close();
  } catch (Throwable t) {}
}

[Singing Boyo]

Toadaly is right... use File streams, not object streams. Forgot that File streams existed for a bit there... So tired :(