How do I sort file names by their extension?

To sort file names by their extension, we can use the ExtensionFileComparator class from the Apache Commons IO library. This class provides a couple instances of comparator such as:

Comparator Description
EXTENSION_COMPARATOR Case sensitive extension comparator
EXTENSION_REVERSE Reverse case sensitive extension comparator
EXTENSION_INSENSITIVE_COMPARATOR Case insensitive extension comparator
EXTENSION_INSENSITIVE_REVERSE Reverse case insensitive extension comparator
EXTENSION_SYSTEM_COMPARATOR System sensitive extension comparator
EXTENSION_SYSTEM_REVERSE Reverse system sensitive path comparator

The following snippet shows you how to use the first two comparators listed above.

package org.kodejava.commons.io;

import org.apache.commons.io.FilenameUtils;

import static org.apache.commons.io.comparator.ExtensionFileComparator.*;

import java.io.File;
import java.util.Arrays;

public class FileSortByExtension {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        File file = new File(".");

        // Excludes directory in the list
        File[] files = file.listFiles(File::isFile);

        if (files != null) {
            // Sort in ascending order.
            Arrays.sort(files, EXTENSION_COMPARATOR);
            FileSortByExtension.displayFileOrder(files);

            // Sort in descending order.
            Arrays.sort(files, EXTENSION_REVERSE);
            FileSortByExtension.displayFileOrder(files);
        }
    }

    private static void displayFileOrder(File[] files) {
        System.out.printf("%-20s | %s%n", "Name", "Ext");
        System.out.println("--------------------------------");
        for (File file : files) {
            System.out.printf("%-20s | %s%n", file.getName(),
                    FilenameUtils.getExtension(file.getName()));
        }
        System.out.println();
    }
}

The result of the code snippet:

Name                 | Ext
--------------------------------
README               | 
lipsum.doc           | doc
lipsum.docx          | docx
data.html            | html
contributors.txt     | txt
pom.xml              | xml

Name                 | Ext
--------------------------------
pom.xml              | xml
contributors.txt     | txt
data.html            | html
lipsum.docx          | docx
lipsum.doc           | doc
README               | 

Maven Dependencies

<dependency>
    <groupId>commons-io</groupId>
    <artifactId>commons-io</artifactId>
    <version>2.16.1</version>
</dependency>

Maven Central

How do I sort files and directories based on their size?

In this example, you will learn how to sort files and directories based on their size. Using the Apache Commons IO, we can utilize the SizeFileComparator class. This class provides some instances to sort file size such as:

Comparator Description
SIZE_COMPARATOR Size comparator instance – directories are treated as zero size
SIZE_REVERSE Reverse size comparator instance – directories are treated as zero size
SIZE_SUMDIR_COMPARATOR Size comparator instance which sums the size of a directory’s contents
SIZE_SUMDIR_REVERSE Reverse size comparator instance which sums the size of a directory’s contents

Now let’s jump to the code snippet below:

package org.kodejava.commons.io;

import org.apache.commons.io.FileUtils;

import java.io.File;
import java.util.Arrays;

import static org.apache.commons.io.comparator.SizeFileComparator.*;

public class FileSortBySize {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        File dir = new File(".");
        File[] files = dir.listFiles();

        if (files != null) {
            // Sort files in ascending order based on file size.
            System.out.println("Ascending order.");
            Arrays.sort(files, SIZE_COMPARATOR);
            FileSortBySize.displayFileOrder(files, false);

            // Sort files in descending order based on file size
            System.out.println("Descending order.");
            Arrays.sort(files, SIZE_REVERSE);
            FileSortBySize.displayFileOrder(files, false);

            // Sort files in ascending order based on file / directory
            // size
            System.out.println("Ascending order with directories.");
            Arrays.sort(files, SIZE_SUMDIR_COMPARATOR);
            FileSortBySize.displayFileOrder(files, true);

            // Sort files in descending order based on file / directory
            // size
            System.out.println("Descending order with directories.");
            Arrays.sort(files, SIZE_SUMDIR_REVERSE);
            FileSortBySize.displayFileOrder(files, true);
        }
    }

    private static void displayFileOrder(File[] files, boolean displayDirectory) {
        for (File file : files) {
            if (!file.isDirectory()) {
                System.out.printf("%-25s - %s%n", file.getName(),
                        FileUtils.byteCountToDisplaySize(file.length()));
            } else if (displayDirectory) {
                long size = FileUtils.sizeOfDirectory(file);
                String friendlySize = FileUtils.byteCountToDisplaySize(size);
                System.out.printf("%-25s - %s%n", file.getName(),
                        friendlySize);
            }
        }
        System.out.println("------------------------------------");
    }
}

In the code snippet above we use a couple method from the FileUtils class such as the FileUtils.sizeOfDirectory() to calculate the size of a directory and FileUtils.byteCountToDisplaySize() to create human-readable file size.

The result of the code snippet:

Ascending order.
.editorconfig             - 389 bytes
kodejava.iml              - 868 bytes
pom.xml                   - 1 KB
------------------------------------
Descending order.
pom.xml                   - 1 KB
kodejava.iml              - 868 bytes
.editorconfig             - 389 bytes
------------------------------------
Ascending order with directories.
.editorconfig             - 389 bytes
src                       - 851 bytes
kodejava.iml              - 868 bytes
pom.xml                   - 1 KB
apache-commons-example    - 8 KB
hibernate-example         - 29 KB
.idea                     - 85 KB
------------------------------------
Descending order with directories.
.idea                     - 85 KB
hibernate-example         - 29 KB
apache-commons-example    - 8 KB
pom.xml                   - 1 KB
kodejava.iml              - 868 bytes
src                       - 851 bytes
.editorconfig             - 389 bytes

Maven Dependencies

<dependency>
    <groupId>commons-io</groupId>
    <artifactId>commons-io</artifactId>
    <version>2.16.1</version>
</dependency>

Maven Central

How do I read text file content line by line to a List of Strings using Commons IO?

The following example show how to use the Apache Commons IO library to read a text file line by line to a List of String. In the code snippet below we will read the contents of a file called sample.txt using FileUtils class. We use FileUtils.readLines() method to read the contents line by line and return the result as a List of Strings.

package org.kodejava.commons.io;

import org.apache.commons.io.FileUtils;

import java.io.File;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.util.List;

public class ReadFileToListSample {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        // Create a file object of sample.txt
        File file = new File("README.md");

        try {
            List<String> contents = FileUtils.readLines(file, "UTF-8");

            // Iterate the result to print each line of the file.
            for (String line : contents) {
                System.out.println(line);
            }
        } catch (IOException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
}

Maven Dependencies

<dependency>
    <groupId>commons-io</groupId>
    <artifactId>commons-io</artifactId>
    <version>2.16.1</version>
</dependency>

Maven Central

How do I generate random string?

package org.kodejava.security;

import java.security.SecureRandom;
import java.util.Random;

public class RandomString {
    public static final String SOURCES =
            "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz1234567890";

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        RandomString rs = new RandomString();
        System.out.println(rs.generateString(new Random(), SOURCES, 10));
        System.out.println(rs.generateString(new Random(), SOURCES, 10));
        System.out.println(rs.generateString(new SecureRandom(), SOURCES, 15));
        System.out.println(rs.generateString(new SecureRandom(), SOURCES, 15));
    }

    /**
     * Generate a random string.
     *
     * @param random     the random number generator.
     * @param characters the characters for generating string.
     * @param length     the length of the generated string.
     */
    public String generateString(Random random, String characters, int length) {
        char[] text = new char[length];
        for (int i = 0; i < length; i++) {
            text[i] = characters.charAt(random.nextInt(characters.length()));
        }
        return new String(text);
    }
}

Example string produced by the code snippets are:

bJGjSgoy7G
SoeTjBy83s
IolJZtkttJixAVY
ZOvQnICNcwcCdJ8

How to check if an object reference is not null?

Usually, if not always, we use the if statement combined with == or != operators to check if an object reference is null or not. We do this to validate arguments passed to constructors or methods doesn’t contain a null value. These null check can be seen as clutter in our code.

The solution is to use the java.util.Objects class. This static utility class provides methods like requireNonNull(T) and requireNonNull(T, String) to check if the specified object reference is not null. If null, these methods will throw a NullPointerException. Using the second method variant we can customise the exception message.

The example below shows how we use these methods.

package org.kodejava.util;

import java.util.Objects;

public class ObjectsNullCheckDemo {
    private String firstName;
    private String lastName;

    /**
     * Validate constructor arguments. The firstName and lastName
     * arguments can't be null. A NullPointerException with the
     * specified message will be thrown.
     */
    public ObjectsNullCheckDemo(String firstName, String lastName) {
        this.firstName = Objects.requireNonNull(firstName,
                "First name can't be null.");
        this.lastName = Objects.requireNonNull(lastName,
                "Last name can't be null.");
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        // This line is fine.
        ObjectsNullCheckDemo demo = new ObjectsNullCheckDemo("John", "Doe");
        System.out.println("demo = " + demo);

        try {
            // This line produce a NullPointerException
            ObjectsNullCheckDemo demo1 = new ObjectsNullCheckDemo("Alice", null);
        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }

        String name = null;
        try {
            // The line below will throw java.lang.NullPointerException.
            Objects.requireNonNull(name);
        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }

    public void setFirstName(String firstName) {
        // First name can't be null.
        this.firstName = Objects.requireNonNull(firstName,
                "First name can't be null.");
    }

    public void setLastName(String lastName) {
        // Last name can't be null.
        this.lastName = Objects.requireNonNull(lastName,
                "Last name can't be null.");
    }

    @Override
    public String toString() {
        return "ObjectsNullCheckDemo{" +
                "firstName='" + firstName + '\'' +
                ", lastName='" + lastName + '\'' +
                '}';
    }
}

Running the code above will print the following result:

demo = ObjectsNullCheckDemo{firstName='John', lastName='Doe'}
java.lang.NullPointerException: Last name can't be null.
    at java.base/java.util.Objects.requireNonNull(Objects.java:233)
    at org.kodejava.util.ObjectsNullCheckDemo.<init>(ObjectsNullCheckDemo.java:17)
    at org.kodejava.util.ObjectsNullCheckDemo.main(ObjectsNullCheckDemo.java:28)
java.lang.NullPointerException
    at java.base/java.util.Objects.requireNonNull(Objects.java:208)
    at org.kodejava.util.ObjectsNullCheckDemo.main(ObjectsNullCheckDemo.java:36)