I have a function that accepts File as an argument. I don't want to create/write a new File (I don't have write access to filesystem) in order to pass my string data to the function. I should add that the String data don't exist in a file (so I cannot read my data from a file).
Can I use Streams and "cast" them to File objects?
Usually when a method accepts a file, there's another method nearby that accepts a stream. If this isn't the case, the API is badly coded. Otherwise, you can use temporary files, where permission is usually granted in many cases. If it's applet, you can request write permission.
An example:
try {
// Create temp file.
File temp = File.createTempFile("pattern", ".suffix");
// Delete temp file when program exits.
temp.deleteOnExit();
// Write to temp file
BufferedWriter out = new BufferedWriter(new FileWriter(temp));
out.write("aString");
out.close();
} catch (IOException e) {
}
No; instances of class File represent a path in a filesystem. Therefore, you can use that function only with a file. But perhaps there is an overload that takes an InputStream instead?
A File object in Java is a representation of a path to a directory or file, not the file itself. You don't need to have write access to the filesystem to create a File object, you only need it if you intend to actually write to the file (using a FileOutputStream for example)
The File class represents the "idea" of a file, not an actual handle to use for I/O. This is why the File class has a .exists() method, to tell you if the file exists or not. (How can you have a File object that doesn't exist?)
By contrast, constructing a new FileInputStream(new File("/my/file")) gives you an actual stream to read bytes from.
FileReader r = new FileReader(file);
Use a file reader load the file and then write its contents to a string buffer.
The link above shows you an example of how to accomplish this. As other post to this answer say to load a file into memory you do not need write access as long as you do not plan on making changes to the actual file.
Fileobject? As the answers have stated, aFileobject is like a reference to a location in the filesystem, and so would be hard to simulate without an actual file. If, however, your function took aFileReaderor aFileInputStream, you could easily modify the code to accept non-file input.