Java reading a file into an ArrayList?

Question

How do you read the contents of a file into an ArrayList in Java?

Here are the file contents:

cat
ho         


        

Answer 1

In Java 8 you could use streams and Files.lines:

List list = null;
try (Stream lines = Files.lines(myPathToTheFile))) {
    list = lines.collect(Collectors.toList());
} catch (IOException e) {
    LOGGER.error("Failed to load file.", e);
}

Or as a function including loading the file from the file system:

private List loadFile() {
    List list = null;
    URI uri = null;

    try {
        uri = ClassLoader.getSystemResource("example.txt").toURI();
    } catch (URISyntaxException e) {
        LOGGER.error("Failed to load file.", e);
    }

    try (Stream lines = Files.lines(Paths.get(uri))) {
        list = lines.collect(Collectors.toList());
    } catch (IOException e) {
        LOGGER.error("Failed to load file.", e);
    }
    return list;
}