Java – Try with Resources

1. Overview

Support for try-with-resources — introduced in Java 7 — allows us to declare resources to be used in a try block with the assurance that the resources will be closed after the execution of that block.

The resources declared need to implement the AutoCloseable interface.

2. Using try-with-resources

Simply put, to be auto-closed, a resource has to be declared inside the try:

try (PrintWriter writer = new PrintWriter(new File("test.txt"))) {
    writer.println("Hello World");
}

3. Replacing try–catch-finally With try-with-resources

The simple and obvious way to use the new try-with-resources functionality is to replace the traditional and verbose try-catch-finally block.

Let’s compare the following code samples.

The first is a typical try-catch-finally block:

Scanner scanner = null;
try {
    scanner = new Scanner(new File("test.txt"));
    while (scanner.hasNext()) {
        System.out.println(scanner.nextLine());
    }
} catch (FileNotFoundException e) {
    e.printStackTrace();
} finally {
    if (scanner != null) {
        scanner.close();
    }
}

And here’s the new super succinct solution using try-with-resources:

try (Scanner scanner = new Scanner(new File("test.txt"))) {
    while (scanner.hasNext()) {
        System.out.println(scanner.nextLine());
    }
} catch (FileNotFoundException fnfe) {
    fnfe.printStackTrace();
}

Here’s where to further explore the Scanner class.

4. try-with-resources With Multiple Resources

We can declare multiple resources just fine in a try-with-resources block by separating them with a semicolon:

try (Scanner scanner = new Scanner(new File("testRead.txt"));
    PrintWriter writer = new PrintWriter(new File("testWrite.txt"))) {
    while (scanner.hasNext()) {
	writer.print(scanner.nextLine());
    }
}

5. A Custom Resource With AutoCloseable

To construct a custom resource that will be correctly handled by a try-with-resources block, the class should implement the Closeable or AutoCloseable interfaces and override the close method:

public class MyResource implements AutoCloseable {
    @Override
    public void close() throws Exception {
        System.out.println("Closed MyResource");
    }
}

6. Resource Closing Order

Resources that were defined/acquired first will be closed last. Let’s look at an example of this behavior:

Resource 1:

public class AutoCloseableResourcesFirst implements AutoCloseable {

    public AutoCloseableResourcesFirst() {
        System.out.println("Constructor -> AutoCloseableResources_First");
    }

    public void doSomething() {
        System.out.println("Something -> AutoCloseableResources_First");
    }

    @Override
    public void close() throws Exception {
        System.out.println("Closed AutoCloseableResources_First");
    }
}

Resource 2:

public class AutoCloseableResourcesSecond implements AutoCloseable {

    public AutoCloseableResourcesSecond() {
        System.out.println("Constructor -> AutoCloseableResources_Second");
    }

    public void doSomething() {
        System.out.println("Something -> AutoCloseableResources_Second");
    }

    @Override
    public void close() throws Exception {
        System.out.println("Closed AutoCloseableResources_Second");
    }
}

Code:

private void orderOfClosingResources() throws Exception {
    try (AutoCloseableResourcesFirst af = new AutoCloseableResourcesFirst();
        AutoCloseableResourcesSecond as = new AutoCloseableResourcesSecond()) {

        af.doSomething();
        as.doSomething();
    }
}

Output:

Constructor -> AutoCloseableResources_First
Constructor -> AutoCloseableResources_Second
Something -> AutoCloseableResources_First
Something -> AutoCloseableResources_Second
Closed AutoCloseableResources_Second
Closed AutoCloseableResources_First

7. catch and finally

A try-with-resources block can still have the catch and finally blocks, which will work in the same way as with a traditional try block.

8. Java 9 – Effectively Final Variables

Before Java 9, we could only use fresh variables inside a try-with-resources block:

try (Scanner scanner = new Scanner(new File("testRead.txt")); 
    PrintWriter writer = new PrintWriter(new File("testWrite.txt"))) { 
    // omitted
}

As shown above, this was especially verbose when declaring multiple resources. As of Java 9 and as part of JEP 213, we can now use final or even effectively final variables inside a try-with-resources block:

final Scanner scanner = new Scanner(new File("testRead.txt"));
PrintWriter writer = new PrintWriter(new File("testWrite.txt"))
try (scanner;writer) { 
    // omitted
}

Put simply, a variable is effectively final if it doesn’t change after the first assignment, even though it’s not explicitly marked as final.

As shown above, the scanner variable is declared final explicitly, so we can use it with the try-with-resources block. Although the writer variable is not explicitly final, it doesn’t change after the first assignment. So, we can to use the writer variable too.

9. Conclusion

In this article, we discussed how to use try-with-resources and how to replace try, catch, and finally with try-with-resources.

We also looked at building custom resources with AutoCloseable and the order in which resources are closed.