Chapter 8: Exceptions and I/O Streams
Presentation slides for
Java Software Solutions
Foundations of Program Design
Third Edition
Presented by
Ali Kassem
Java Software Solutions is published by Addison-Wesley
Presentation slides are copyright 2002 by John Lewis and William Loftus. All rights reserved.
Instructors using the textbook may use and modify these slides for pedagogical purposes.
Exceptions and I/O Streams
Now we can explore two related topics further: exceptions
and input/output streams
Chapter 8 focuses on:
• the try-catch statement
• exception propagation
• creating and throwing exceptions
• types of I/O streams
• Keyboard class processing
• reading and writing text files
• object serialization and deserialization
• more GUI components
• animations
Ali Kassem 2
Exceptions
An exception is an object that describes an unusual or
erroneous situation
Exceptions are thrown by a program, and may be caught
and handled by another part of the program
A program can be separated into a normal execution flow
and an exception execution flow
An error is also represented as an object in Java, but
usually represents a unrecoverable situation and should not
be caught
Ali Kassem 3
Exception Handling
Java has a predefined set of exceptions and errors that can
occur during execution
A program can deal with an exception in one of three ways:
• ignore it
• handle it where it occurs
• handle it an another place in the program
The manner in which an exception is processed is an
important design consideration
Ali Kassem 4
Exception Handling
If an exception is ignored by the program, the program will
terminate abnormally and produce an appropriate message
The message includes a call stack trace that indicates the
line on which the exception occurred
The call stack trace also shows the method call trail that
lead to the attempted execution of the offending line
• The getMessage method returns a string explaining why the
exception was thrown
• The printStackTrace method prints the call stack trace
See [Link] (page 449)
Ali Kassem 5
The try Statement
To process an exception when it occurs, the line that throws
the exception is executed within a try block
A try block is followed by one or more catch clauses, which
contain code to process an exception
Each catch clause has an associated exception type and is
called an exception handler
When an exception occurs, processing continues at the first
catch clause that matches the exception type
See [Link] (page 451)
Ali Kassem 6
The finally Clause
A try statement can have an optional clause following the
catch clauses, designated by the reserved word finally
The statements in the finally clause always are executed
If no exception is generated, the statements in the finally
clause are executed after the statements in the try block
complete
If an exception is generated, the statements in the finally
clause are executed after the statements in the appropriate
catch clause complete
Ali Kassem 7
Exception Propagation
An exception can be handled at a higher level if it is not
appropriate to handle it where it occurs
Exceptions propagate up through the method calling
hierarchy until they are caught and handled or until they
reach the level of the main method
A try block that contains a call to a method in which an
exception is thrown can be used to catch that exception
See [Link] (page 455)
See [Link] (page 456)
Ali Kassem 8
The throw Statement
A programmer can define an exception by extending the
Exception class or one of its descendants
Exceptions are thrown using the throw statement
Usually a throw statement is nested inside an if statement
that evaluates the condition to see if the exception should be
thrown
See [Link] (page 459)
See [Link] (page 460)
Ali Kassem 9
Checked Exceptions
An exception is either checked or unchecked
A checked exception either must be caught by a method, or
must be listed in the throws clause of any method that may
throw or propagate it
A throws clause is appended to the method header
The compiler will issue an error if a checked exception is
not handled appropriately
Ali Kassem 10
Unchecked Exceptions
An unchecked exception does not require explicit handling,
though it could be processed that way
The only unchecked exceptions in Java are objects of type
RuntimeException or any of its descendants
Errors are similar to RuntimeException and its
descendants
• Errors should not be caught
• Errors to not require a throws clause
I/O Streams
A stream is a sequence of bytes that flow from a source to a
destination
In a program, we read information from an input stream
and write information to an output stream
A program can manage multiple streams simultaneously
I/O Streams
The [Link] package contains many classes that allow us
to define various streams with particular characteristics
Some classes assume that the data consists of characters
Others assume that the data consists of raw bytes of binary
information
Streams can be further subdivided as follows:
• data stream, which acts as either a source or destination
• processing stream, which alters or manipulates the basic data in the
stream
I/O Streams
Data Processing
Streams Streams
Input Streams
Output Streams
Character
Streams
Byte
Streams
Character vs. Byte Streams
A character stream manages 16-bit Unicode characters
A byte stream manages 8-bit bytes of raw binary data
• A program must determine how to interpret and use the bytes in a
byte stream
• Typically they are used to read and write sounds and images
The InputStream and OutputStream classes (and their
descendants) represent byte streams
The Reader and Writer classes (and their descendants)
represent character streams
Data vs. Processing Streams
A data stream represents a particular source or destination
such as a string in memory or a file on disk
A processing stream (also called a filtering stream)
manipulates the data in the stream
• It may convert the data from one format to another
• It may buffer the stream
The IOException Class
Operations performed by the I/O classes may throw an
IOException
• A file intended for reading or writing might not exist
• Even if the file exists, a program may not be able to find it
• The file might not contain the kind of data we expect
An IOException is a checked exception
Standard I/O
There are three standard I/O streams:
• standard input – defined by [Link]
• standard output – defined by [Link]
• standard error – defined by [Link]
[Link] typically represents keyboard input
[Link] and [Link] typically represent a
particular window on the monitor screen
We use [Link] when we execute println
statements
Standard I/O
PrintStream objects automatically have print and
println methods defined for them
The PrintWriter class is needed for advanced
internationalization and error checking
The Keyboard Class
The Keyboard class was written by the authors of your
textbook to facilitate reading data from standard input
Chapter 5 explored some of the underlying issues
Now we can examine the processing of the Keyboard class
further
The Keyboard class:
• declares a useful standard input stream
• handles I/O exceptions that may be thrown
• parses input lines into tokens
• converts an input value into the expected type
• handles conversion problems
The Keyboard Class
The Keyboard class declares the following input stream:
InputStreamReader isr =
new InputStreamReader ([Link])
BufferedReader stdin = new BufferedReader (isr);
The InputStreamReader object converts the original
byte stream into a character stream
The BufferedReader object allows us to use the
readLine method to get an entire line of input
The Keyboard Class
Each invocation or readLine is performed inside a try
block
The Keyboard class uses a StringTokenizer object to
extract tokens
The Keyboard class performs type conversions as needed
Text Files
Information can be read from and written to text files by
declaring and using the correct I/O streams
The FileReader class represents an input file containing
character data
The FileReader and BufferedReader classes together
create a convenient text file output stream
See [Link] (page 468)
See [Link] (page 470)
Text Files
The FileWriter class represents a text output file, but
with minimal support for manipulating data
Therefore, the PrintWriter class provides print and
println methods
See [Link] (page 472)
Output streams should be closed explicitly
Object Serialization
Object serialization is the mechanism for saving an object,
and its current state, so that it can be used again in another
program
The idea that an object can “live” beyond the program
execution that created it is called persistence
Object serialization is accomplished using the
Serializable interface and the ObjectOutputStream
and ObjectInputStream classes
The writeObject method is used to serialize an object
The readObject method is used to deserialize an object
Object Serialization
ObjectOutputStream and ObjectInputStream are
processing streams that must be wrapped around an
OutputStream or an InputStream
See [Link] (page 475)
See [Link] (page 477)
Once serialized, the objects can be read again into another
program
See [Link] (page 479)
Object Serialization
Serialization takes into account any other objects that are
referenced by an object being serialized, saving them too
Each such object must also implement the Serializable
interface
Many classes from the Java class library implement
Serializable, including the String class
The ArrayList class also implements the Serializable
interface, permitting an entire list of objects to be serialized
in one operation
The transient Modifier
When we serialize an object, sometimes we prefer to
exclude a particular piece of information such as a
password
The reserved word transient modifies the declaration of
a variable so that it will not be included in the byte stream
when the object is serialized
For example
private transient int password;
File Choosers
A GUI-based program sometimes involve the use of
external files
A file chooser is a specialized dialog box created using the
JFileChooser class
A file chooser allows the user to browse a disk or other
storage device to select a file
A text area is similar to a text field, but can contain multiple
lines
See [Link] (page 482)
The DisplayFile Program
Color Choosers
A color chooser is a component that allows a user to specify
a color
It is similar to a file chooser in that it displays a special
purpose dialog box
It is created using the JColorChooser class
A color can be selected using swatches or RGB values
See [Link] (page 484)
The DisplayColor Program
Image Icons
An image icon object represents an image
ImageIcon objects use either JPEG or GIF images
They can be used in several situations, such as being
displayed in a label
A JLabel can contain a String, and ImageIcon, or
both
The orientation of the label's text and image can be set
explicitly
See [Link] (page 487)
See [Link] (page 488)
The LabelDemo Program
Key Events
A key event is generated when a keyboard key is pressed
Constants in the KeyEvent class can be used to determine
which key was pressed
The KeyListener interface contains three methods,
representing three events:
• key pressed – a key is pressed
• key released – a key is released
• key typed – called when a pressed key produces a key character
See [Link] (page 490)
See [Link] (page 491)
The Direction Program
Animations
An animation is a series of images that gives the
appearance of movement
To create the illusion of movement, we use a timer to
change the scene after an appropriate delay
The Timer class of the [Link] package represents
a component, even though it has no visual representation
A Timer object generates an action event at specified
intervals
Animations
The start and stop methods of the Timer class start
and stop the timer
The delay can be set using the Timer constructor or using
the setDelay method
See [Link] (page 496)
See [Link] (page 497)
The Rebound Program
Summary
Chapter 8 has focused on:
• the try-catch statement
• exception propagation
• creating and throwing exceptions
• types of I/O streams
• Keyboard class processing
• reading and writing text files
• object serialization and deserialization
• more GUI components
• key events
• animations
