How to create a temporary file in Java

08/09/2017

The class File, in java, has a method to create a temp file when defining a prefix and a suffix.

Syntax:

File tmpFile = File.createTempFile("temp_", ".txt");

Here a an example creating a temporary File in the temporary directory defined in the JVM.

Create the following java file:

import java.io.File;
import java.io.IOException;

public class TmpFile {

    public static void main(String[] argv) {

	try {
	    File tmpFile = File.createTempFile("temp_", ".txt");

	    System.out.println("The tmp File is " + tmpFile.getAbsolutePath());
	} catch (IOException e) {
	    // TODO Auto-generated catch block
	    e.printStackTrace();
	}
    }

}

The output will be:

The tmp File is C:\Users\Olivier\AppData\Local\Temp\temp_738482536127269501.txt

Note: The File Object has a method to create the temp file, that uses a directory. In that case the file will be created in that directory. If no directory is passed, then the file is created in the java.io.tmpdir directory.

References:

class File Javadoc

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