How to create a new File on the file system

In this article, I will be demonstrating how you can create a new file on the file system.

Using File.createNewFile

The File class has a method createNewFile. You can use this to create a new file on the fie system. The following code demonstrates this:

private static void createNewFile(String filePath) {
    File file = new File(filepath);
    try {
      file.createNewFile();
    } catch (IOException e) {
      // TODO Auto-generated catch block
      e.printStackTrace();
    }
  }

This code creates a file at the specified  filePath. The file path should include the file location as well as file name. The createNewFile method returns a boolean value which indicates whether file creation was successful or not.

Using FileWriter.write

The java.io.FileWriter has a write method that you can use to write to a file. If the underlying file does not exist, this method automatically creates the file. So you can use this approach when you want to create a file and write some data to it. The following code demonstrates this:

private static void createNewFileUsingFileWriter(String filePath) {
     FileWriter fileWriter;
    try {
      fileWriter = new FileWriter(filePath);
       fileWriter.write("Hello World");
       fileWriter.close();
    } catch (IOException e) {
      // TODO Auto-generated catch block
      e.printStackTrace();
    }
    
    
  }

The code first creates a FileWriter object corresponding to filePath. It then uses the fileWriter.write  method to write the String “Hello World” at this path. So this will create the file as well as write the String value to this file.

Using FileOutputStream.write

Just like java.io.FileWriter, there is a java.io.FileOutputStream class that you can use to write to a file. So, it has a write method as well. However, the FileOutputStream can only write bytes.  So you can use this approach when you want to create a file and write some data to it. The following code demonstrates this:

private static void createNewFileUsingFileOutputStream(String filePath) {
     FileOutputStream fos;
    try {
      fos = new FileOutputStream(filePath);
      fos.write(new String("Hello World").getBytes());
      fos.close();
    } catch (IOException e) {
      // TODO Auto-generated catch block
      e.printStackTrace();
    }
    
    
  }

Just like the FileWriter code, this code creates a FileOutputStream corresponding to filePath. It then uses the write method to write to this file.

Conclusion

So in this article we saw the different ways in which you can create a file on the file system in Java. We saw how the file.createNewFile

, FileWriter and FileOutputStream can be used to create a File