After reviewing all of these answers on how to easily write a file in Scala, and some of them are quite nice, I had three issues:
- In the Jus12's answer, the use of currying for the using helper method is non-obvious for Scala/FP beginners
- Needs to encapsulate lower level errors with
scala.util.Try
- Needs to show Java developers new to Scala/FP how to properly nest dependent resources so the
close method is performed on each dependent resource in reverse order - Note: closing dependent resources in reverse order ESPECIALLY IN THE EVENT OF A FAILURE is a rarely understood requirement of the java.lang.AutoCloseable specification which tends to lead to very pernicious and difficult to find bugs and run time failures
Before starting, my goal isn't conciseness. It's to facilitate easier understanding for Scala/FP beginners, typically those coming from Java. At the very end, I will pull all the bits together, and then increase the conciseness.
First, the using method needs to be updated to use Try (again, conciseness is not the goal here). It will be renamed to tryUsingAutoCloseable:
def tryUsingAutoCloseable[A <: AutoCloseable, R]
(instantiateAutoCloseable: () => A) //parameter list 1
(transfer: A => scala.util.Try[R]) //parameter list 2
: scala.util.Try[R] =
Try(instantiateAutoCloseable())
.flatMap(
autoCloseable =>
try
transfer(autoCloseable))
finally
autoCloseable.close()
)
The beginning of the above tryUsingAutoCloseable method might be confusing because it appears to have two parameter lists instead of the customary single parameter list. This is called currying. And I won't go into detail how currying works or where it is occasionally useful. It turns out that for this particular problem space, it's the right tool for the job.
Next, we need to create method, tryPrintToFile, which will create a (or overwrite an existing) File and write a List[String]. It uses a FileWriter which is encapsulated by a BufferedWriter which is in turn encapsulated by a PrintWriter. And to elevate performance, a default buffer size much larger than the default for BufferedWriter is defined, defaultBufferSize, and assigned the value 65536.
Here's the code (and again, conciseness is not the goal here):
val defaultBufferSize: Int = 65536
def tryPrintToFile(
lines: List[String],
location: java.io.File,
bufferSize: Int = defaultBufferSize
): scala.util.Try[Unit] = {
tryUsingAutoCloseable(() => new java.io.FileWriter(location)) { //this open brace is the start of the second curried parameter to the tryUsingAutoCloseable method
fileWriter =>
tryUsingCloseable(() => new java.io.BufferedWriter(fileWriter, bufferSize)) { //this open brace is the start of the second curried parameter to the tryUsingAutoCloseable method
bufferedWriter =>
tryUsingAutoCloseable(() => new java.io.PrintWriter(bufferedWriter)) { //this open brace is the start of the second curried parameter to the tryUsingAutoCloseable method
printWriter =>
scala.util.Try(
lines.foreach(line => printWriter.println(line))
)
}
}
}
}
The above tryPrintToFile method is useful in that it takes a List[String] as input and sends it to a File. Let's now create a tryWriteToFile method which takes a String and writes it to a File.
Here's the code (and I'll let you guess conciseness's priority here):
def tryWriteToFile(
content: String,
location: java.io.File,
bufferSize: Int = defaultBufferSize
): scala.util.Try[Unit] = {
tryUsingAutoCloseable(() => new java.io.FileWriter(location)) { //this open brace is the start of the second curried parameter to the tryUsingAutoCloseable method
fileWriter =>
tryUsingAutoCloseable(() => new java.io.BufferedWriter(fileWriter, bufferSize)) { //this open brace is the start of the second curried parameter to the tryUsingAutoCloseable method
bufferedWriter =>
Try(bufferedWriter.write(content))
}
}
}
Finally, it is useful to be able to fetch the contents of a File as a String. While scala.io.Source provides a convenient method for easily obtaining the contents of a File, the close method must be used on the Source to release the underlying JVM and file system handles. If this isn't done, then the resource isn't released until the JVM GC (Garbage Collector) gets around to releasing the Source instance itself. And even then, there is only a weak JVM guarantee the finalize method will be called by the GC to close the resource. This means that it is the client's responsibility to explicitly call the close method, just the same as it is the responsibility of a client to tall close on an instance of java.lang.AutoCloseable. For this, we need a second definition of the using method which handles scala.io.Source.
Here's the code for this (still not being concise):
def tryUsingSource[S <: scala.io.Source, R]
(instantiateSource: () => S)
(transfer: S => scala.util.Try[R])
: scala.util.Try[R] =
Try(instantiateSource())
.flatMap(
source =>
try
transfer(source))
finally
source.close()
)
And here is an example usage of it in a super simple line streaming file reader (currently using to read tab delimited files from database output):
def tryProcessSource(
file: java.io.File
, parseLine: (String, Int) => List[String] = (line, index) => List(line)
, filterLine: (List[String], Int) => Boolean = (values, index) => true
, retainValues: (List[String], Int) => List[String] = (values, index) => values
, isFirstLineNotHeader: Boolean = false
): scala.util.Try[List[List[String]]] =
tryUsingSource(scala.io.Source.fromFile(file)) {
source =>
scala.util.Try(
( for {
(line, index) <-
source.getLines().buffered.zipWithIndex
values =
parseLine(line, index)
if (index == 0 && !isFirstLineNotHeader) || filterLine(values, index)
retainedValues =
retainValues(values, index)
} yield retainedValues
).toList //must explicitly use toList due to the source.close which will
//occur immediately following execution of this anonymous function
)
)
An updated version of the above function has been provided as an answer to a different but related StackOverflow question.
Now, bringing that all together with the imports extracted (making it much easier to paste into Scala Worksheet present in both Eclipse ScalaIDE and IntelliJ Scala plugin to make it easy to dump output to the desktop to be more easily examined with a text editor), this is what the code looks like (with increased conciseness):
import scala.io.Source
import scala.util.Try
import java.io.{BufferedWriter, FileWriter, File, PrintWriter}
val defaultBufferSize: Int = 65536
def tryUsingAutoCloseable[A <: AutoCloseable, R]
(instantiateAutoCloseable: () => A)(transfer: A => scala.util.Try[R]): scala.util.Try[R] =
Try(instantiateAutoCloseable())
.flatMap(
autoCloseable =>
try transfer(autoCloseable)) finally autoCloseable.close()
)
def tryUsingSource[S <: scala.io.Source, R]
(instantiateSource: () => S)(transfer: S => scala.util.Try[R]): scala.util.Try[R] =
Try(instantiateSource())
.flatMap(
source =>
try transfer(source)) finally source.close()
)
def tryPrintToFile(
lines: List[String],
location: File,
bufferSize: Int = defaultBufferSize
): Try[Unit] =
tryUsingAutoCloseable(() => new FileWriter(location)) { fileWriter =>
tryUsingAutoCloseable(() => new BufferedWriter(fileWriter, bufferSize)) { bufferedWriter =>
tryUsingAutoCloseable(() => new PrintWriter(bufferedWriter)) { printWriter =>
Try(lines.foreach(line => printWriter.println(line)))
}
}
}
def tryWriteToFile(
content: String,
location: File,
bufferSize: Int = defaultBufferSize
): Try[Unit] =
tryUsingAutoCloseable(() => new FileWriter(location)) { fileWriter =>
tryUsingAutoCloseable(() => new BufferedWriter(fileWriter, bufferSize)) { bufferedWriter =>
Try(bufferedWriter.write(content))
}
}
def tryProcessSource(
file: File,
parseLine: (String, Int) => List[String] = (line, index) => List(line),
filterLine: (List[String], Int) => Boolean = (values, index) => true,
retainValues: (List[String], Int) => List[String] = (values, index) => values,
isFirstLineNotHeader: Boolean = false
): Try[List[List[String]]] =
tryUsingSource(Source.fromFile(file)) { source =>
Try(
( for {
(line, index) <- source.getLines().buffered.zipWithIndex
values = parseLine(line, index)
if (index == 0 && !isFirstLineNotHeader) || filterLine(values, index)
retainedValues = retainValues(values, index)
} yield retainedValues
).toList
)
)
As a Scala/FP newbie, I've burned many hours (in mostly head scratching frustration) earning the above knowledge and solutions. I hope this helps other Scala/FP newbies get over this particular learning hump faster.
