Reading Java Properties file without escaping values

Question

My application needs to use a .properties file for configuration. In the properties files, users are allow to specify paths.

Problem

Propert

Answer 1

Based on @Ian Harrigan, here is a complete solution to get Netbeans properties file (and other escaping properties file) right from and to ascii text-files :

import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.ByteArrayInputStream;
import java.io.ByteArrayOutputStream;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.InputStream;
import java.io.InputStreamReader;
import java.io.OutputStream;
import java.io.OutputStreamWriter;
import java.io.PrintWriter;
import java.io.Reader;
import java.io.Writer;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.Collections;
import java.util.List;
import java.util.Properties;

/**
 * This class allows to handle Netbeans properties file. 
 * It is based on the work of  : http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6233532/reading-java-properties-file-without-escaping-values.
 * It overrides both load methods in order to load a netbeans property file, taking into account the \ that 
 * were escaped by java properties original load methods.
 * @author stephane
 */
public class NetbeansProperties extends Properties {
    @Override
    public synchronized void load(Reader reader) throws IOException {
        BufferedReader bfr = new BufferedReader( reader );
        ByteArrayOutputStream out = new ByteArrayOutputStream();

        String readLine = null;
        while( (readLine = bfr.readLine()) != null ) {
            out.write(readLine.replace("\\","\\\\").getBytes());
            out.write("\n".getBytes());
        }//while

        InputStream is = new ByteArrayInputStream(out.toByteArray());
        super.load(is);
    }//met

    @Override
    public void load(InputStream is) throws IOException {
        load( new InputStreamReader( is ) );
    }//met

    @Override
    public void store(Writer writer, String comments) throws IOException {
        PrintWriter out = new PrintWriter( writer );
        if( comments != null ) {
            out.print( '#' );
            out.println( comments );
        }//if
        List<String> listOrderedKey = new ArrayList<String>();
        listOrderedKey.addAll( this.stringPropertyNames() );
        Collections.sort(listOrderedKey );
        for( String key : listOrderedKey ) {
            String newValue = this.getProperty(key);
            out.println( key+"="+newValue  );
       }//for
    }//met

    @Override
    public void store(OutputStream out, String comments) throws IOException {
        store( new OutputStreamWriter(out), comments );
    }//met
}//class

Answer 2

Why not simply extend the properties class to incorporate stripping of double forward slashes. A good feature of this will be that through the rest of your program you can still use the original Properties class.

public class PropertiesEx extends Properties {
    public void load(FileInputStream fis) throws IOException {
        Scanner in = new Scanner(fis);
        ByteArrayOutputStream out = new ByteArrayOutputStream();

        while(in.hasNext()) {
            out.write(in.nextLine().replace("\\","\\\\").getBytes());
            out.write("\n".getBytes());
        }

        InputStream is = new ByteArrayInputStream(out.toByteArray());
        super.load(is);
    }
}

Using the new class is a simple as:

PropertiesEx p = new PropertiesEx();
p.load(new FileInputStream("C:\\temp\\demo.properties"));
p.list(System.out);

The stripping code could also be improved upon but the general principle is there.