3 ways to Create a New File in Java

Dushmantha Charaka January 03, 2018 0 Comments

The first task in the java i/o is to create a new file. Creating a new file is an easy task and it can be done in 3 ways. The three ways are
1. using java.io.File class
2. using java.io.FileOutputStream class
3. using java.nio.file.Files class

1. Create a file in java using java.io.File class

We will see how to create a file in java using createNewFile() method. If a file does not exist, then this method will create a file and returns true. If the file does not exist then it returns false.

import java.io.*;
import java.util.*;

public class CreateFileUsingFileClass
{
   public static void main( String[] args )
   { 
      try {
      File file = new File("C:\\newfile.txt");
     /*createNewFile() will return true if file gets 
       * created or if the file is 
       * already present it would return false
       */
             boolean filepresent = file.createNewFile();
      if (filepresent){
           System.out.println("File is created successfully");
      }
      else{
           System.out.println("File is already present at the specified  location");
      }
     } catch (IOException e) {
      System.out.println("Exception Occurred:");
         e.printStackTrace();
   }
   }
}

2. Create a file in java using java.io.FileOutputStream class

In this method a binary file is created. This method is the preferred way prior to java 7. It is better to use NIO, which we will see next in how to create a file in java.

public class CreateFileUsingFileOutputStream {
    public static void main (String args[]){    
        String data = "Test Java Hungry";
        FileOutputStream out = new FileOutputStream("c://temp//testFile.txt");
        out.write(data.getBytes());
        out.close();
    }    
}

3. Create a file in java using java.no.file.Files class

This should be the prefer way to create a file in java after java 7.

public class CreateFileUsingNIO {
    public static void main (String args[]){    
        String data = "Test Java Hungry";
        Files.write(Paths.get("c://temp//testFile.txt"), data.getBytes());
         
        //Another way
         
        List<String> lines = Arrays.asList("1st line", "2nd line");
        Files.write(Paths.get("file6.txt"), lines, StandardCharsets.UTF_8,
                StandardOpenOption.CREATE, StandardOpenOption.APPEND);
    }    
}