Java - How Can I Write My ArrayList to a file, and Read (load) that file to the original ArrayList?

Question

I am writing a program in Java which displays a range of afterschool clubs (E.G. Football, Hockey - entered by user). The clubs are added into the following ArrayList<

Answer 1

As an exercise, I would suggest doing the following:

public void save(String fileName) throws FileNotFoundException {
    PrintWriter pw = new PrintWriter(new FileOutputStream(fileName));
    for (Club club : clubs)
        pw.println(club.getName());
    pw.close();
}

This will write the name of each club on a new line in your file.

Soccer
Chess
Football
Volleyball
...

I'll leave the loading to you. Hint: You wrote one line at a time, you can then read one line at a time.

Every class in Java extends the Object class. As such you can override its methods. In this case, you should be interested by the toString() method. In your Club class, you can override it to print some message about the class in any format you'd like.

public String toString() {
    return "Club:" + name;
}

You could then change the above code to:

public void save(String fileName) throws FileNotFoundException {
    PrintWriter pw = new PrintWriter(new FileOutputStream(fileName));
    for (Club club : clubs)
         pw.println(club); // call toString() on club, like club.toString()
    pw.close();
}