Java read text from file (simple way)

Solution 1

import java.io.IOException;
import java.nio.charset.StandardCharsets;
import java.nio.file.Files;
import java.nio.file.Path;
import java.nio.file.Paths;
import java.util.List;

public class ReadTextExample {

    public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {

        Path path = Paths.get("C:\\projects\\text_file.txt");

        List<String> lines = Files.readAllLines(path, StandardCharsets.UTF_8);

        for (String line : lines) {
            System.out.println(line);
        }
    }
}

Output:

line 1
line 2
line 3

Solution 2

We can also read entire text file in just 1 line of code in java:

• new String(Files.readAllBytes(path))

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

public class ReadTextExample {

    public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {

        Path path = Paths.get("C:\\projects\\text_file.txt");

        String entireTextFile = new String(Files.readAllBytes(path));

        System.out.println(entireTextFile);
    }
}

Output:

line 1
line 2
line 3

Solution 3

import java.io.*;
import java.nio.charset.StandardCharsets;
import java.nio.file.Path;
import java.nio.file.Paths;

public class FileUtils {

    public static String readText(Path path) throws IOException {
        File file = path.toFile();

        StringBuilder builder = new StringBuilder();
        char[] buffer = new char[1024];

        try (InputStream stream = new FileInputStream(file);
             Reader reader = new InputStreamReader(stream, StandardCharsets.UTF_8)
        ) {
            while (true) {
                int count = reader.read(buffer, 0, buffer.length);

                if (count == -1)
                    break;

                builder.append(buffer, 0, count);
            }
        }

        return builder.toString();
    }

    // usage example:
    public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {

        String text = FileUtils.readText(Paths.get("C:\\projects\\text_file.txt"));

        System.out.println(text);
    }
}

Output:

line 1
line 2
line 3

Input data

Input data preparation for examples in this article.

File path under Windows operating system:

C:\\projects\\text_file.txt

File content:

line 1
line 2
line 3

See also

• Java - read all text from file with custom FileUtils