Method to find string inside of the text file. Then getting the following lines up to a certain limit

Question

So this is what I have so far :

public String[] findStudentInfo(String studentNumber) {
                Student student = new Student();
                Scanner scanner = new Scanner("Student.txt");
                // Find the line that contains student Id
                // If not found keep on going through the file
                // If it finds it stop
                // Call parseStudentInfoFromLine get the number of courses
                // Create an array (lines) of size of the number of courses plus one
                // assign the line that the student Id was found to the first index value of the array
                //assign each next line to the following index of the array up to the amount of classes - 1
                // return string array
}

I know how to find if a file contains the string I am trying to find but I don't know how to retrieve the whole line that its in.

This is my first time posting so If I have done anything wrong please let me know.

Answer 1

You can do something like this:

File file = new File("Student.txt");

try {
    Scanner scanner = new Scanner(file);

    //now read the file line by line...
    int lineNum = 0;
    while (scanner.hasNextLine()) {
        String line = scanner.nextLine();
        lineNum++;
        if(<some condition is met for the line>) { 
            System.out.println("ho hum, i found it on line " +lineNum);
        }
    }
} catch(FileNotFoundException e) { 
    //handle this
}

Answer 2

Using the Apache Commons IO API https://commons.apache.org/proper/commons-io/ I was able to establish this using FileUtils.readFileToString(file).contains(stringToFind)

The documentation for this function is at https://commons.apache.org/proper/commons-io/javadocs/api-2.4/org/apache/commons/io/FileUtils.html#readFileToString(java.io.File)

Answer 3

Here is a java 8 method to find a string in a text file:

for (String toFindUrl : urlsToTest) {
        streamService(toFindUrl);
    }

private void streamService(String item) {
        try (Stream<String> stream = Files.lines(Paths.get(fileName))) {
           stream.filter(lines -> lines.contains(item))
                       .forEach(System.out::println);

        } catch (IOException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }

Answer 4

When you are reading the file, have you considered reading it line by line? This would allow you to check if your line contains the file as your are reading, and you could then perform whatever logic you needed based on that?

Scanner scanner = new Scanner("Student.txt");
String currentLine;

while((currentLine = scanner.readLine()) != null)
{
    if(currentLine.indexOf("Your String"))
    {
         //Perform logic
    }
}

You could use a variable to hold the line number, or you could also have a boolean indicating if you have passed the line that contains your string:

Scanner scanner = new Scanner("Student.txt");
String currentLine;
int lineNumber = 0;
Boolean passedLine = false;
while((currentLine = scanner.readLine()) != null)
{
    if(currentLine.indexOf("Your String"))
    {
         //Do task
         passedLine = true;
    }
    if(passedLine)
    {
       //Do other task after passing the line.
    }
    lineNumber++;
}