java.lang.Object java.util.Dictionary<K,V> java.util.Hashtable<Object,Object> java.util.Properties
public class Properties
The Properties
class represents a persistent set of properties. The Properties
can be saved to a stream or loaded from a stream. Each key and its corresponding value in the property list is a string.
A property list can contain another property list as its "defaults"; this second property list is searched if the property key is not found in the original property list.
Because Properties
inherits from Hashtable
, the put
and putAll
methods can be applied to a Properties
object. Their use is strongly discouraged as they allow the caller to insert entries whose keys or values are not Strings
. The setProperty
method should be used instead. If the store
or save
method is called on a "compromised" Properties
object that contains a non-String
key or value, the call will fail.
The load
and store
methods load and store properties in a simple line-oriented format specified below. This format uses the ISO 8859-1 character encoding. Characters that cannot be directly represented in this encoding can be written using Unicode escapes ; only a single 'u' character is allowed in an escape sequence. The native2ascii tool can be used to convert property files to and from other character encodings.
The loadFromXML(InputStream)
and storeToXML(OutputStream, String, String)
methods load and store properties in a simple XML format. By default the UTF-8 character encoding is used, however a specific encoding may be specified if required. An XML properties document has the following DOCTYPE declaration:
<!DOCTYPE properties SYSTEM "http://java.sun.com/dtd/properties.dtd">Note that the system URI (http://java.sun.com/dtd/properties.dtd) is not accessed when exporting or importing properties; it merely serves as a string to uniquely identify the DTD, which is:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <!-- DTD for properties --> <!ELEMENT properties ( comment?, entry* ) > <!ATTLIST properties version CDATA #FIXED "1.0"> <!ELEMENT comment (#PCDATA) > <!ELEMENT entry (#PCDATA) > <!ATTLIST entry key CDATA #REQUIRED>
protected Properties
defaults
Properties()
Properties(Properties defaults)
String
getProperty(String key)
String
getProperty(String key, String defaultValue)
void
list(PrintStream out)
void
list(PrintWriter out)
void
load(InputStream inStream)
void
loadFromXML(InputStream in)
Enumeration<?>
propertyNames()
void
save(OutputStream out, String comments)
store(OutputStream out, String comments)
method or the storeToXML(OutputStream os, String comment)
method. Object
setProperty(String key, String value)
put
. void
store(OutputStream out, String comments)
Properties
table to the output stream in a format suitable for loading into a Properties
table using the load
method. void
storeToXML(OutputStream os, String comment)
void
storeToXML(OutputStream os, String comment, String encoding)
clear, clone, contains, containsKey, containsValue, elements, entrySet, equals, get, hashCode, isEmpty, keys, keySet, put, putAll, rehash, remove, size, toString, values
defaults
protected Properties defaults
public Properties()
public Properties(Properties defaults)
defaults
- the defaults.
public Object setProperty(String key, String value)
put
. Provided for parallelism with the getProperty method. Enforces use of strings for property keys and values. The value returned is the result of the Hashtable call to put
.
key
- the key to be placed into this property list.
value
- the value corresponding to key.
null
if it did not have one.
getProperty(java.lang.String)
public void load(InputStream inStream) throws IOException
\b
does not represent a backspace character.\
, before a non-valid escape character as an error; the backslash is silently dropped. For example, in a Java string the sequence "\z"
would cause a compile time error. In contrast, this method silently drops the backslash. Therefore, this method treats the two character sequence "\b"
as equivalent to the single character 'b'
.IllegalArgumentException
is thrown if a malformed Unicode escape appears in the input.
This method processes input in terms of lines. A natural line of input is terminated either by a set of line terminator characters (\n
or \r
or \r\n
) or by the end of the file. A natural line may be either a blank line, a comment line, or hold some part of a key-element pair. The logical line holding all the data for a key-element pair may be spread out across several adjacent natural lines by escaping the line terminator sequence with a backslash character, \
. Note that a comment line cannot be extended in this manner; every natural line that is a comment must have its own comment indicator, as described below. If a logical line is continued over several natural lines, the continuation lines receive further processing, also described below. Lines are read from the input stream until end of file is reached.
A natural line that contains only white space characters is considered blank and is ignored. A comment line has an ASCII '#'
or '!'
as its first non-white space character; comment lines are also ignored and do not encode key-element information. In addition to line terminators, this method considers the characters space (' '
, '\u0020'
), tab ('\t'
, '\u0009'
), and form feed ('\f'
, '\u000C'
) to be white space.
If a logical line is spread across several natural lines, the backslash escaping the line terminator sequence, the line terminator sequence, and any white space at the start the following line have no affect on the key or element values. The remainder of the discussion of key and element parsing will assume all the characters constituting the key and element appear on a single natural line after line continuation characters have been removed. Note that it is not sufficient to only examine the character preceding a line terminator sequence to see if the line terminator is escaped; there must be an odd number of contiguous backslashes for the line terminator to be escaped. Since the input is processed from left to right, a non-zero even number of 2n contiguous backslashes before a line terminator (or elsewhere) encodes n backslashes after escape processing.
The key contains all of the characters in the line starting with the first non-white space character and up to, but not including, the first unescaped '='
, ':'
, or white space character other than a line terminator. All of these key termination characters may be included in the key by escaping them with a preceding backslash character; for example,
\:\=
would be the two-character key ":="
. Line terminator characters can be included using \r
and \n
escape sequences. Any white space after the key is skipped; if the first non-white space character after the key is '='
or ':'
, then it is ignored and any white space characters after it are also skipped. All remaining characters on the line become part of the associated element string; if there are no remaining characters, the element is the empty string ""
. Once the raw character sequences constituting the key and element are identified, escape processing is performed as described above.
As an example, each of the following three lines specifies the key "Truth"
and the associated element value "Beauty"
:
Truth = Beauty Truth:Beauty Truth :BeautyAs another example, the following three lines specify a single property:
fruits apple, banana, pear, \ cantaloupe, watermelon, \ kiwi, mangoThe key is
"fruits"
and the associated element is:
"apple, banana, pear, cantaloupe, watermelon, kiwi, mango"Note that a space appears before each
\
so that a space will appear after each comma in the final result; the \
, line terminator, and leading white space on the continuation line are merely discarded and are not replaced by one or more other characters.
As a third example, the line:
cheesesspecifies that the key is
"cheeses"
and the associated element is the empty string ""
.
inStream
- the input stream.
IOException
- if an error occurred when reading from the input stream.
IllegalArgumentException
- if the input stream contains a malformed Unicode escape sequence.
@Deprecated public void save(OutputStream out, String comments)
store(OutputStream out, String comments)
method or the storeToXML(OutputStream os, String comment)
method.
store(OutputStream out, String comments)
method and suppresses IOExceptions that were thrown.
out
- an output stream.
comments
- a description of the property list.
ClassCastException
- if this Properties
object contains any keys or values that are not Strings
.
public void store(OutputStream out, String comments) throws IOException
Properties
table to the output stream in a format suitable for loading into a Properties
table using the load
method. The stream is written using the ISO 8859-1 character encoding.
Properties from the defaults table of this Properties
table (if any) are not written out by this method.
If the comments argument is not null, then an ASCII #
character, the comments string, and a line separator are first written to the output stream. Thus, the comments
can serve as an identifying comment.
Next, a comment line is always written, consisting of an ASCII #
character, the current date and time (as if produced by the toString
method of Date
for the current time), and a line separator as generated by the Writer.
Then every entry in this Properties
table is written out, one per line. For each entry the key string is written, then an ASCII =
, then the associated element string. Each character of the key and element strings is examined to see whether it should be rendered as an escape sequence. The ASCII characters \
, tab, form feed, newline, and carriage return are written as \\
, \t
, \f
\n
, and \r
, respectively. Characters less than \u0020
and characters greater than \u007E
are written as \u
xxxx for the appropriate hexadecimal value xxxx. For the key, all space characters are written with a preceding \
character. For the element, leading space characters, but not embedded or trailing space characters, are written with a preceding \
character. The key and element characters #
, !
, =
, and :
are written with a preceding backslash to ensure that they are properly loaded.
After the entries have been written, the output stream is flushed. The output stream remains open after this method returns.
out
- an output stream.
comments
- a description of the property list.
IOException
- if writing this property list to the specified output stream throws an IOException.
ClassCastException
- if this Properties
object contains any keys or values that are not Strings
.
NullPointerException
- if out
is null.
public void loadFromXML(InputStream in) throws IOException, InvalidPropertiesFormatException
The XML document must have the following DOCTYPE declaration:
<!DOCTYPE properties SYSTEM "http://java.sun.com/dtd/properties.dtd">Furthermore, the document must satisfy the properties DTD described above.
The specified stream remains open after this method returns.
in
- the input stream from which to read the XML document.
IOException
- if reading from the specified input stream results in an IOException.
InvalidPropertiesFormatException
- Data on input stream does not constitute a valid XML document with the mandated document type.
NullPointerException
- if in
is null.
storeToXML(OutputStream, String, String)
public void storeToXML(OutputStream os, String comment) throws IOException
An invocation of this method of the form props.storeToXML(os, comment) behaves in exactly the same way as the invocation props.storeToXML(os, comment, "UTF-8");.
os
- the output stream on which to emit the XML document.
comment
- a description of the property list, or null
if no comment is desired.
IOException
- if writing to the specified output stream results in an IOException.
NullPointerException
- if os
is null.
loadFromXML(InputStream)
public void storeToXML(OutputStream os, String comment, String encoding) throws IOException
The XML document will have the following DOCTYPE declaration:
<!DOCTYPE properties SYSTEM "http://java.sun.com/dtd/properties.dtd">
If the specified comment is null
then no comment will be stored in the document.
The specified stream remains open after this method returns.
os
- the output stream on which to emit the XML document.
comment
- a description of the property list, or null
if no comment is desired.
IOException
- if writing to the specified output stream results in an IOException.
NullPointerException
- if os
is null
, or if encoding
is null
.
loadFromXML(InputStream)
public String getProperty(String key)
null
if the property is not found.
key
- the property key.
setProperty(java.lang.String, java.lang.String)
, defaults
public String getProperty(String key, String defaultValue)
key
- the hashtable key.
defaultValue
- a default value.
setProperty(java.lang.String, java.lang.String)
, defaults
public Enumeration<?> propertyNames()
Enumeration
, defaults
public void list(PrintStream out)
out
- an output stream.
public void list(PrintWriter out)
out
- an output stream.
Copyright © 2004, 2010 Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Use is subject to license terms. Also see the documentation redistribution policy.
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