Read text file with scanner class.

[frente158]

Hi, the program should read the text file below. This is suppose to be a history of transactions. Where the first number is the customer ID, then the name of the investment with the type, then the number of transactions follow by the date, type (sell or buy) the number of shares and price.

32242342
IBM,stock
6
20050426,B,30,25.00
20050616,B,50,27.00
20060326,S,50,30.00
20070226,S,30,35.00
20080401,B,10,40.00
20080401,S,10,50.00
ABC,fund
6
20050326,B,10,35.00
20050416,B,20,37.00
20090101,B,40,50.00
20060826,S,30,40.00
20060826,S,20,40.00
20090926,S,20,45.00
XYZ,stock
0
NMA,fund
0
MOBC,stock
0

The program have a class call HistoryItem (below). What I have so far is just reading the file, class call ReadFile, but I need to store in variables the information date, shares and price. Any help I would appreciate. Thanks.

//ReadFile class
package portfolio_manager;
import java.io.File;
import java.io.FileNotFoundException;
import java.io.FileReader;
import java.util.Scanner;

public class ReadFile {
/**Constructor.
@param aFileName full name of an existing, readable file.*/
public ReadFile(String aFileName){
fFile = new File(aFileName);
}

public final void processLine()throws FileNotFoundException {

Scanner scanner = new Scanner(new FileReader(fFile));
scanner.useDelimiter(",");

while(scanner.hasNextLine())
{
String date = scanner.nextLine();
System.out.println(date);
}

scanner.close();
}

private final File fFile;

}

//HistoryItem class
package portfolio_manager;
import java.util.UUID;

class HistoryItem {

UUID id;
String date;
int shares;
double price;

HistoryItem(String date, int shares, double price)
{
id = UUID.randomUUID();
this.date = date;
this.shares = shares;
this.price = price;
}
}

[ozzyman]

If you write the file in a CSV format, that should make it easier for you to read your variables back in.

CSV is a comma-delimited table, for example you have a table with four columns: id, date, shares, price

So all you have to do is write these four variables each separated by a comma(","), then create a new line for each record.

Your logic to write the file should be like this:

  final Char delimiter = ','
  final Char newline = '\n'

  Open text file

    For each Item in itemsArray
      String line = Item.id + delimiter
         + Item.date + delimiter
         + Item.shares + delimiter
         + Item.price + newline
      
      //write record to text file
      write(line)
    End For

  Close text file

When you're reading the file back in, read it line-by-line and split each string by the delimiter character.

  ...
  String[] record = line.split(delimiter);
  ...

record[0] would then contain the ID
record[1] would contain the Date
record[2] would contain the Shares
record[3] would contain the Price.

You'll need a method to create an instance of your HistoryItem object after reading those values from the text/csv file.

[frente158]

Thanks for your reply. I tried but it doesn't seem to work, most likely is my code, I'm not able to translate it to actual code. I'll keep trying.

[ozzyman]

post your code here and also post any compilation errors so we can find out where its going wrong