In this exciting tutorial we will learn some basics about saving, opening and convert encoding of text files in REALbasic using TextInputStream, TextOutputStream classes and ConvertEncoding function. Watch it, learn it, enjoy it!
Insert to Window Class one TextArea Control and 3 x PushButton Control. Here is my example of GUI look for this application. You can make it the same or insert the controls where you like.
To save all text available in TextArea to text file insert to PushButton1 Sub Open() this code. Please have in mind that you can save the file without interacting with user for example: f = GetFolderItem(“textfile.txt”)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 | Dim t As TextOutputStream Dim f As FolderItem Dim dlg As SaveAsDialog dlg = New SaveAsDialog f = dlg.ShowModal() // open save as dialog for entering the file name and selecting location to save if f < > nil then // f different from nil t = f.CreateTextFile // create file in selected location t.Write (TextArea1.Text) // write date from TextArea to file t.Close // close file else // user cancelled end if |
To open a text file and load it content to TextArea Control use this code in PushButton2 Sub Open().
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 | Dim t As TextInputStream Dim f As FolderItem Dim dlg As OpenDialog dlg = New OpenDialog f = dlg.ShowModal() // open open dialog for selecting a file to load if f < > nil then // f different from nil t = f.OpenAsTextFile // open selected text file TextArea1.Text = t.ReadAll // read data from text file into TextArea control t.Close // close the file else // user cancelled end if |
When you need to write text to a file that will be opened by other application that expects a particular encoding, you should convert the encoding before you call the Write method. You can do this by using ConvertEncoding function. Look on this example that converts the text from a TextArea1 to the UTF8 encoding. Code from PushButton3 Sub Open().
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 | Dim t As TextOutputStream Dim f As FolderItem Dim dlg As SaveAsDialog Dim s As String dlg = New SaveAsDialog f = dlg.ShowModal() // open save as dialog for entering the file name and selecting location to save if f < > nil then // f different from nil t = f.CreateTextFile // create file in selected location s = ConvertEncoding(TextArea1.Text, Encodings.UTF8) // convert encoding to UTF8 t.Write (s) // write date from string to file t.Close // close file else // user cancelled end if |
BinaryStream objects are used to read and write data to and from a binary file. The benefit of using BinaryStreams rather than text streams is that you can read from and write to any position in the file. Text files must be read sequentially from the start to the end. On Windows and Macintosh only, BinaryStream objects can work with files larger than 2 gigabytes. This example reads each pair of bytes from a file and writes them in reverse order to a new file. The user chooses the source file using the Open-file dialog box and saves the new file using the Save as dialog box
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 | Dim WriteToFile as BinaryStream Dim ReadFromFile as BinaryStream Dim f as FolderItem f = GetOpenFolderItem("text") if f < > nil then // if f different nil then ReadFromFile = BinaryStream.Open (f,False) ReadFromFile.littleEndian = True f = GetSaveFolderItem ("","") if f < > nil then // if f different nil then WriteToFile = BinaryStream.Create (f,False) while not ReadFromFile.EOF WriteToFile.WriteShort ReadFromFile.ReadShort wend WriteToFile.Close end if ReadFromFile.Close end if |
REALbasic City is a part of TUTSPOLIS where you can find tutorials about creating cross-platform software for Mac, Windows and Linux using REALbasic 2009. Learn a object-oriented dialect of the BASIC programming language and create your own games and software such as browsers, periodic tables, catalogs for your
personal book library, e-mail clients, weather clients, instant messengers, unarchivers etc.
CreateAsTextFile and OpenAsTextFile had been deprecated and soon will be removed. Use Stream instead
Thanks for tip Steve!