java class for reading TXT into hashmap

Question

I've been stuck on this project where it asks me create a class to read multiple txt documents and display them on my main app's textarea.

the documents are in this general format id<>name

The <> needs to be split, and only the name should be displayed in the textarea. My instructor said hash maps would be a good collection to use, but this entire concept is kinda blurry to me.

I need help creating a class that handles I/O + hashmap to store all files, then be able to display the name part for the main app. Help is much appreciated!

Answer 1

Use BufferedReader to read each line from the file and then follow the below pseudo code (Since this is homework I can't provide the actual code). You basically looking for String.split(...) , BufferedReader , FileReader , Map (HashMap) classes.

Step 1

//Read each file in to Map
for each line
{
  split the line at <>
  you will have two tokens
  token 1 is id and token 2 is the name
  store both the tokens in Map (token 1 is the key and token 2 is the value)
}

Step 2

//Display each entry from the map
for each entry in the Map
display the value in text area

Answer 2

As this is a homework, I can only provide some direction to solve the problems.

1) You have multiple documents all containing multiple line with each line having format id<>name.

2) You can read file using Java File I/O API

3) Create hashmap

4) Read each document file line by line

4) Split the line using String.split("<>"), you will get two strings id and name

5) use ID as a key and name as a value. Put this in hashmap

6) After parsing all documents you will have filled hashmap

7) Use java swing API for TextArea to display content hashmap in TextArea.