i want to write the data in file and also read it to display simultaneously from the same in C#.
how to do this ?
var fs = new System.IO.FileStream(fileName, System.IO.FileAccess.ReadWrite);
and then you can call
long oldPos = fs.Position;
fs.Write(....);
fs.Flush();
fs.Position = oldPos;
fs.Read(...);
Flush after writing and read it afterwards.
By the way, why don't display it from memory?
You can open a FileStream for both reading and writing. For example:
byte[] writeBuffer; // Contains data to write
byte[] readBuffer; // Large enough space to read data
FileStream fileStream = new FileStream("file.txt",
FileMode.OpenOrCreate, FileAccess.ReadAndWrite);
fileStream.Write(writeBuffer, 0, writeBuffer.Length);
fileStream.Seek(0, SeekOrigin.Begin);
fileStream.Read(readBuffer, 0, readBuffer.Length);
You can use the same object to do reads and writes. However, doing both simultaneously requires careful coordination in your application to prevent the operations interfering with each other. A better solution might be to queue the operations.
Related
Suppose you have this:
using FileStream fileStream = ...;
fileStream.Write(bytes);
using GZipStream gzipStream = new GZipStream(fileStream, CompressionLevel.Optimal);
gzipStream.Write(bytesToCompress);
Would writing to fileStream first, and then creating a new GZipStream from that stream and then writing bytes to it work?
Do I have to flush fileStream first? Or is this simply unsafe?
Would writing to fileStream first, and then creating a new GZipStream from that stream and then writing bytes to it work?
Yes, that is sort of the point of streams really, that they are chainable. See Compose streams.
Do I have to flush fileStream first? Or is this simply unsafe?
Flush is only necessary when you wish to purge buffers and guarantee that the data are written to the backing store (e.g. the filesystem or network).
I've been working on a project recently that involves a lot of FileStreaming, something which I've not really touched on before.
To try and better acquaint myself with the principles of such methods, I've written some code that (theoretically) downloads a file from one dir to another, and gone through it step by step, commenting in my understanding of what each step achieves, like so...
Get fileinfo object from DownloadRequest Object
RemoteFileInfo fileInfo = svr.DownloadFile(request);
DownloadFile method in WCF Service
public RemoteFileInfo DownloadFile(DownloadRequest request)
{
RemoteFileInfo result = new RemoteFileInfo(); // create empty fileinfo object
try
{
// set filepath
string filePath = System.IO.Path.Combine(request.FilePath , #"\" , request.FileName);
System.IO.FileInfo fileInfo = new System.IO.FileInfo(filePath); // get fileinfo from path
// check if exists
if (!fileInfo.Exists)
throw new System.IO.FileNotFoundException("File not found",
request.FileName);
// open stream
System.IO.FileStream stream = new System.IO.FileStream(filePath,
System.IO.FileMode.Open, System.IO.FileAccess.Read);
// return result
result.FileName = request.FileName;
result.Length = fileInfo.Length;
result.FileByteStream = stream;
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
// do something
}
return result;
}
Use returned FileStream from fileinfo to read into a new write stream
// set new location for downloaded file
string basePath = System.IO.Path.Combine(#"C:\SST Software\DSC\Compilations\" , compName, #"\");
string serverFileName = System.IO.Path.Combine(basePath, file);
double totalBytesRead = 0.0;
if (!Directory.Exists(basePath))
Directory.CreateDirectory(basePath);
int chunkSize = 2048;
byte[] buffer = new byte[chunkSize];
// create new write file stream
using (System.IO.FileStream writeStream = new System.IO.FileStream(serverFileName, FileMode.OpenOrCreate, FileAccess.ReadWrite))
{
do
{
// read bytes from fileinfo stream
int bytesRead = fileInfo.FileByteStream.Read(buffer, 0, chunkSize);
totalBytesRead += (double)bytesRead;
if (bytesRead == 0) break;
// write bytes to output stream
writeStream.Write(buffer, 0, bytesRead);
} while (true);
// report end
Console.WriteLine(fileInfo.FileName + " has been written to " + basePath + " - Done!");
writeStream.Close();
}
What I was hoping for is any clarification or expansion on what exactly happens when using a FileStream.
I can achieve the download, and now I know what code I need to write in order to perform such a download, but I would like to know more about why it works. I can find no 'beginner-friendly' or step by step explanations on the web.
What is happening here behind the scenes?
A stream is just an abstraction, fundamentally it works like a pointer within a collection of data.
Take the example string of "Hello World!" for example, it is just a collection of characters, which are fundamentally just bytes.
As a stream, it could be represented to have:
A length of 12 (possibly more including termination characters etc)
A position in the stream.
You read a stream by moving the position around and requesting data.
So reading the text above could be (in pseudocode) seen to be like this:
do
get next byte
add gotten byte to collection
while not the end of the stream
the entire data is now in the collection
Streams are really useful when it comes to accessing data from sources such as the file system or remote machines.
Imagine a file that is several gigabytes in size, if the OS loaded all of that into memory any time a program wanted to read it (say a video player), there would be a lot of problems.
Instead, what happens is the program requests access to the file, and the OS returns a stream; the stream tells the program how much data there is, and allows it to access that data.
Depending on implementation, the OS may load a certain amount of data into memory ahead of the program accessing it, this is known as a buffer.
Fundamentally though, the program just requests the next bit of data, and the OS either gets it from the buffer, or from the source (e.g. the file on disk).
The same principle applies to streams between different computers, except requesting the next bit of data may very well involve a trip to the remote machine to request it.
The .NET FileStream class and the Stream base class, all just defer to the windows systems for working with streams in the end, there's nothing particularly special about them, it's just what you can do with the abstraction that makes them so powerful.
Writing to a stream is just the same, but it just puts data into the buffer, ready for the requester to access.
Infinite Data
As a user pointed out, streams can be used for data of indeterminate length.
All stream operations take time, so reading a stream is typically a blocking operation that will wait until data is available.
So you could loop forever while the stream is still open, and just wait for data to come in - an example of this in practice would be a live video broadcast.
I've since located a book - C# 5.0 All-In-One For Dummies - It explains everything about all Stream classes, how they work, which one is most appropriate and more.
Only been reading about 30 minutes, already have such a better understanding. Excellent guide!
I have a text file that's appended to over time and periodically I want to truncate it down to a certain size, e.g. 10MB, but keeping the last 10MB rather than the first.
Is there any clever way to do this? I'm guessing I should seek to the right point, read from there into a new file, delete old file and rename new file to old name. Any better ideas or example code? Ideally I wouldn't read the whole file into memory because the file could be big.
Please no suggestions on using Log4Net etc.
If you're okay with just reading the last 10MB into memory, this should work:
using(MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream(10 * 1024 * 1024)) {
using(FileStream s = new FileStream("yourFile.txt", FileMode.Open, FileAccess.ReadWrite)) {
s.Seek(-10 * 1024 * 1024, SeekOrigin.End);
s.CopyTo(ms);
s.SetLength(10 * 1024 * 1024);
s.Position = 0;
ms.Position = 0; // Begin from the start of the memory stream
ms.CopyTo(s);
}
}
You don't need to read the whole file before writing it, especially not if you're writing into a different file. You can work in chunks; reading a bit, writing, reading a bit more, writing again. In fact, that's how all I/O is done anyway. Especially with larger files you never really want to read them in all at once.
But what you propose is the only way of removing data from the beginning of a file. You have to rewrite it. Raymond Chen has a blog post on exactly that topic, too.
I tested the solution from "false" but it doesn't work for me, it trims the file but keeps the beginning of it, not the end.
I suspect that CopyTo copies the whole stream instead of starting for the stream position. Here's how I made it work:
int trimSize = 10 * 1024 * 1024;
using (MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream(trimSize))
{
using (FileStream s = new FileStream(logFilename, FileMode.Open, FileAccess.ReadWrite))
{
s.Seek(-trimSize, SeekOrigin.End);
byte[] bytes = new byte[trimSize];
s.Read(bytes, 0, trimSize);
ms.Write(bytes, 0, trimSize);
ms.Position = 0;
s.SetLength(trimSize);
s.Position = 0;
ms.CopyTo(s);
}
}
You could read the file into a binary stream and use the seek method to just retrieve the last 10MB of data and load them into memory. Then you save this stream into a new file and delete the old one. The text data could be truncated though so you have to decide if this is exceptable.
Look here for an example of the Seek method:
http://www.dotnetperls.com/seek
I have see this term branded around but I don't really understand how you open a file in memory.
I have the files written to disk in a temp location but this needs cleaning when a certain form closes and I can't do it when it's open. It's a must that this folder gets emptied. I was wondering if I opened files in memory instead whether it would make a difference?
MemoryStream inMemoryCopy = new MemoryStream();
using (FileStream fs = File.OpenRead(path))
{
fs.CopyTo(inMemoryCopy);
}
// Now you can delete the file at 'path' and still have an in memory copy
I think you want to work with Memory Mapped files added recently to .NET 4.
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/salvapatuel/archive/2009/06/08/working-with-memory-mapped-files-in-net-4.aspx
Memory Mapped Files .NET
I think it means to read the content of that file into memory as a whole and then close the connection to the file. Assuming it's a file that's not too big you could just read it into a byte[]:
byte[] fileContent = File.ReadAllBytes(fileName);
If it's a text file read it into a string using
string fileContent = File.ReadAllText(fileName);
Once you've done that use a StreamReader to read it later as you would a file on disk.
You can use DeleteOnClose parameter of FileStream constructor:
FileStream fs = new FileStream("<Path Here>", FileMode.Create,
FileAccess.ReadWrite, FileShare.None, 1024, FileOptions.DeleteOnClose);
and the file will be deleted when closed.
I have a byte array for a file, is there a way to take that and save it has a file to a remote file server?
File.WriteAllBytes(#"\\server\public_share\MyFile.txt", byteArray);
Writing your data to file is the simple part and #aaron has shown you how...
i.e. File.WriteAllBytes(....etc
But something to be aware of, if you're transferring binary data over the wire and if your data contains bytes that could be interpreted as control characters then your data transfer will be problematic.
What you may need to do is encode your data first so that you can transfer it safely, typically you would use something like Base64 encoding.
You can use the Convert helper class to do that...
Convert.ToBase64String("file contents");
If you are doing this in the codebehind then you will need to use the FileStream and BinaryWriter objects.
Something like this;
FileStream filestream = new FileStream("myfile.txt", FileMode.Open);
BinaryReader br = new BinaryReader(filestream);
String msg = br.ReadString();
br.Close();
filestream.Close();
FileStream networkStream = new FileStream(#"\\server\share\file.txt", FileMode.Create);
BinaryWriter bw = new BinaryWriter(filestream);
bw.Write(msg);
bw.Close();
networkStream.Close();
If you're passing it through Javascript maybe using a HTML browse button then you'll need to do the same sort of thing but you will get the file stream from the post form request.
You may have an issue writing to the network location, if you're using IIS then you could set up a virtual directory and set the credentials in IIS. The alternative is that you will need to do impersonation to write the file to the network server.
Mike