File not found when trying to pass user given file to new scanner object

Question

public void readItemData()
    {
        try {
            Frame frame = null;
            FileDialog fileBox = new FileDialog(frame ,"Open", FileDialog.LOAD);
            fileBox.setVisible(true);
            String filename = fileBox.getFile();
            System.out.println(filename);
            File inFile = new File("filename");
            System.out.println(inFile.getAbsolutePath());
            Scanner fileScanner = new Scanner(inFile);
            while ( fileScanner.hasNext() )
            {
                String line = fileScanner.next();
                System.out.println(line);
            }
        }
        catch (FileNotFoundException ex)
        {
         System.out.println("Error.");
        }
    }

The above code is supposed to take a file given by the file dialog box, then pass it to a scanner which reads the whole file. The system to take the file is working, but when passed to the scanner it always gives a file not found exception. I'm not sure how to pass it properly to the scanner and simply read line by line.

I tried using quotations marks and not, removing the try-catch, etc. I feel like it is a simple problem but I cant figure it out. There have been instances where I got it to print the name of the file, but I think that was when I passed it in quotations and it was reading as if it was a string.

Answer 1

The FileDialog.getFile() method only gives you the filename. You need to also call getDirectory() to get the directory of the file. It's likely that you were trying to get a file from a different directory than what the user selected.

Instead of calling getDirectory() and getFile() and putting them together, it would be easier to call getFiles(). This returns an array of File - it's an array because the user may have selected more than one file. If the user pressed Cancel, an empty array would be returned.

So you can do this:

        File[] files = fileBox.getFiles();
        if (files.length == 1) {
            File inFile = files[0];
            try (Scanner fileScanner = new Scanner(inFile)) {
                ... rest of your code...
            }

Answer 2

I also see probably a mistake here:

while ( fileScanner.hasNext() )
{
    String line = fileScanner.next();
    System.out.println(line);
}

What you need here is nextLine() instead of next()

while ( fileScanner.hasNextLine() )
{
    String line = fileScanner.nextLine();
    System.out.println(line);
}