Correct way to close nested streams and writers in Java [duplicate]

When closing chained streams, you only need to close the outermost stream. Any errors will be propagated up the chain and be caught.

Refer to Java I/O Streams for details.

To address the issue

However, if flush() throws a runtime exception for some reason, then out.close() will never be called.

This isn't right. After you catch and ignore that exception, execution will pick back up after the catch block and the out.close() statement will be executed.

Your colleague makes a good point about the RuntimeException. If you absolutely need the stream to be closed, you can always try to close each one individually, from the outside in, stopping at the first exception.

In the Java 7 era, try-with-resources is certainly the way to go. As mentioned in several previous answers, the close request propagates from the outermost stream to the innermost stream. So a single close is all that is required.

try (ObjectInputStream ois = new ObjectInputStream(new FileInputStream(f))) {
  // do something with ois
}

There is however a problem with this pattern. The try-with-resources is not aware of the inner FileInputStream, so if the ObjectInputStream constructor throws an exception, the FileInputStream is never closed (until the garbage collector gets to it). The solution is...

try (FileInputStream fis = new FileInputStream(f); ObjectInputStream ois = new ObjectInputStream(fis)) {
  // do something with ois
}

This is not as elegant, but is more robust. Whether this is actually a problem will depend on what exceptions can be thrown during construction of the outer object(s). ObjectInputStream can throw IOException which may well get handled by an application without terminating. Many stream classes only throw unchecked exceptions, which may well result in termination of the application.

It is a good practice to use Apache Commons to handle IO related objects.

In the finally clause use IOUtils

IOUtils.closeQuietly(bWriter); IOUtils.closeQuietly(oWritter);

Code snippet below.

BufferedWriter bWriter = null;
OutputStreamWriter oWritter = null;

try {
  oWritter  = new OutputStreamWriter( httpConnection.getOutputStream(), "utf-8" );
  bWriter = new BufferedWriter( oWritter );
  bWriter.write( xml );
}
finally {
  IOUtils.closeQuietly(bWriter);
  IOUtils.closeQuietly(oWritter);
}

I usually do the following. First, define a template-method based class to deal with the try/catch mess

import java.io.Closeable;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.util.LinkedList;
import java.util.List;

public abstract class AutoFileCloser {
    // the core action code that the implementer wants to run
    protected abstract void doWork() throws Throwable;

    // track a list of closeable thingies to close when finished
    private List<Closeable> closeables_ = new LinkedList<Closeable>();

    // give the implementer a way to track things to close
    // assumes this is called in order for nested closeables,
    // inner-most to outer-most
    protected final <T extends Closeable> T autoClose(T closeable) {
            closeables_.add(0, closeable);
            return closeable;
    }

    public AutoFileCloser() {
        // a variable to track a "meaningful" exception, in case
        // a close() throws an exception
        Throwable pending = null;

        try {
            doWork(); // do the real work

        } catch (Throwable throwable) {
            pending = throwable;

        } finally {
            // close the watched streams
            for (Closeable closeable : closeables_) {
                if (closeable != null) {
                    try {
                        closeable.close();
                    } catch (Throwable throwable) {
                        if (pending == null) {
                            pending = throwable;
                        }
                    }
                }
            }

            // if we had a pending exception, rethrow it
            // this is necessary b/c the close can throw an
            // exception, which would remove the pending
            // status of any exception thrown in the try block
            if (pending != null) {
                if (pending instanceof RuntimeException) {
                    throw (RuntimeException) pending;
                } else {
                    throw new RuntimeException(pending);
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

Note the "pending" exception -- this takes care of the case where an exception thrown during close would mask an exception we might really care about.

The finally tries to close from the outside of any decorated stream first, so if you had a BufferedWriter wrapping a FileWriter, we try to close the BuffereredWriter first, and if that fails, still try to close the FileWriter itself. (Note that the definition of Closeable calls for close() to ignore the call if the stream is already closed)

You can use the above class as follows:

try {
    // ...

    new AutoFileCloser() {
        @Override protected void doWork() throws Throwable {
            // declare variables for the readers and "watch" them
            FileReader fileReader = 
                    autoClose(fileReader = new FileReader("somefile"));
            BufferedReader bufferedReader = 
                    autoClose(bufferedReader = new BufferedReader(fileReader));

            // ... do something with bufferedReader

            // if you need more than one reader or writer
            FileWriter fileWriter = 
                    autoClose(fileWriter = new FileWriter("someOtherFile"));
            BufferedWriter bufferedWriter = 
                    autoClose(bufferedWriter = new BufferedWriter(fileWriter));

            // ... do something with bufferedWriter
        }
    };

    // .. other logic, maybe more AutoFileClosers

} catch (RuntimeException e) {
    // report or log the exception
}

Using this approach you never have to worry about the try/catch/finally to deal with closing files again.

If this is too heavy for your use, at least think about following the try/catch and the "pending" variable approach it uses.