Creating Temporary Files In Specified Java Directory

Hello Friends,

In this tutorial we are going to learn how you can create a temporary file in specified Java directory.

So making a temporary files might be required several times when you are working for the files that will be needed

for a particular time interval regarding that session.

So we will start our tutorial by setting the development environment in which you can use the following IDE:

• IntelliJ IDEA
• Eclipse
• Simple Text Editor which contains JDK installed in it

For creating the temporary files, the first task that arises in our program is to important the necessary

classes relevant to it which includes –

• Path – It is an interface which represents you the actual path to work with the file
• Paths – It is a class which will provide you the static methods for creating the instance of  path interface
• Files –  It is a class which will provide you the static methods for performing operations to create, read, write & delete the files if you need (no compulsion for it, use whenever you need it)
• Don’t forget to handle the exception using IOException class

import java.io.IOException;
import java.nio.file.Files;
import java.nio.file.Path;
import java.nio.file.Paths;

 

After performing this, the next step is to specify the directory where you want to create temporary files by creating the Path object –

Path temp_dir = Files.createTempDirectory("temp_dir");

 

The createTempDirectory() method is used to create temporary directory to the system directory.

 

Path tempDir = Files.createTempDirectory("temp_dir");

Now define the path for temporary file –

Path tempFile = Paths.get(tempDir.toString(), "file_temp.txt");

Here the Paths.get() is a method in Java that is used to create a Path object which will display the file/directory  which you want to create.

 

The next step is to create the temporary files using Files.createTempFile() method.

Path createTempFile = Files.createTempFile(tempDir, "file_temp", ".txt");

 

For this purpose you need to provide the suffix (for file name) & .preffix (for extension) for the temporary path which you have created.

Place this block of code in try block so if the file will create it will throw no error and by some issues if the file is not created then we can handle the error.

Either, you can write the data to that file by using Files.writeString() methodin which you have to pass 2 parameters including the following –

1. which files you have to write the data.
2. The Data to be written in the program.

The Whole Program Will Be Like This –

import java.io.IOException;
import java.nio.file.Files;
import java.nio.file.Path;
import java.nio.file.Paths;

public class CreateTempFile {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        try {
     
            Path tempDir = Files.createTempDirectory("temp_dir");

            Path createTempFile = Files.createTempFile(tempDir, "file_temp", ".txt");

            Files.writeString(createdTempFile, "Enter The Message You Want");

            System.out.println("Temporary file has been created at: " + createTempFile.toString());

            // Optional: You can clean up by deleting the temporary file and directory after use of you program.
            // Files.delete(createdTempFile);
            // Files.delete(tempDir);
        } catch (IOException e) {

            System.err.println("Error: " + e.getMessage());
        }
    }
}

 

Thanks !