Write String to a File in Java

Looking to Write String to File Java? Lets explore different ways to achieve it.

• Using BufferedWriter
• With FileOutputStream
• Using PrintWriter
• With DataOutputStream
• Using FileChannel
• Create and Write to a Temporary File

Using BufferedWriter

Let’s use BufferedWriter of Java to write a String to a new text file.

public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
try {
	 String value = "Welcome";
	 BufferedWriter bw = new BufferedWriter(new FileWriter("src/resources/hello.txt"));
	 bw.write(value);
	 bw.close();
	 System.out.println("Output written to hello.txt is: " +value);		 
	} catch (Exception e) {
		 e.printStackTrace();
	}

}

Output:
Output written to hello.txt is: Welcome

 

With FileOutputStream

Let’s use FileOutputStream class to write binary data to a text file.

Below code converts a String byte array and writes the bytes to a file using FileOutputStream.

The file path is passed to the output stream to write the desired string value as per the program.

public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
 try {
	  String value = "Welcome";
	  FileOutputStream fos = new FileOutputStream("src/resources/hello.txt");
	  byte[] bytes = value.getBytes();
	  fos.write(bytes);
	  fos.close();
	  System.out.println("Output written to hello.txt is: " +value);		 
	} catch (Exception e) {
		e.printStackTrace();
	}

}
Output:
Output written to hello.txt is: Welcome

 

Using PrintWriter

We can use PrintWriter object to write formatted text to a file.

First the file path is passed to the FileWriter class.

And then PrintWriter class will process the Java FileWriter to print the formatted text in a file.

public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
 try {
	 FileWriter fileWriter = new FileWriter("src/resources/hello.txt");
	 PrintWriter pw = new PrintWriter(fileWriter);
	 pw.printf("Welcome to %s in Year %d", "Java World", 2020);
	 pw.close();
	} catch (Exception e) {
		e.printStackTrace();
	}

}

Output:
Output written to hello.txt is below

Welcome to Java World in Year 2020

 

With DataOutputStream

Let’s leverage DataOutputStream to write a String to a file.

Also the writeUTF method takes care of character encoding format that has to be written to a file.

The default character encoding is modified UTF-8 format.

public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
 try {
	 String value = "Welcome";
	 FileOutputStream fs = new FileOutputStream("src/resources/hello.txt");
	 DataOutputStream os = new DataOutputStream(new BufferedOutputStream(fs));
	 os.writeUTF(value);
	 os.close();
	 System.out.println("Output written to hello.txt is: " +value);
	} catch (Exception e) {
		e.printStackTrace();
	}

}

Output:
Output written to hello.txt is: Welcome

 

Using FileChannel

Let’s use FileChannel to write a String to a file.

Also FileChannel will be faster than the traditional Java IO.

public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
 try {
	RandomAccessFile stream = new RandomAccessFile("src/resources/hello.txt", "rw");
	FileChannel channel = stream.getChannel();
	String value = "Welcome";
	byte[] strBytes = value.getBytes();
	ByteBuffer buffer = ByteBuffer.allocate(strBytes.length);
	buffer.put(strBytes);
	buffer.flip();
	channel.write(buffer);
	stream.close();
	channel.close();
	System.out.println("Output written to hello.txt is: " +value);
 } catch (Exception e) {
	e.printStackTrace();
	}

}

Output:
Output written to hello.txt is: Welcome

 

Create and Write to a Temporary File

Let’s create a temporary file using createTempFile method from File Object.

And then to write a String to a file, lets use Java FileWriter class.

public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
 try {
	String value = "Welcome";
	File tempFile = File.createTempFile("testfile", ".tmp");
	FileWriter writer = new FileWriter(tempFile);
	writer.write(value);
	writer.close();
  } catch (Exception e) {
	e.printStackTrace();
  }

}

Output:
The testfile.tmp will be created in Temp folder and the value 'Welcome' written to the temp file.

 

To conclude this java tutorial, we covered various examples to write string to a file in Java.

Happy Coding Readers 🙂