Is it possible to read a word document using FileReader or FileInputStream?

[parag Chatterjee]

Is it possible to read a word document using FileReader or FileInputStream?
I am trying it in vain.The reading is giving some unknown characters.
This is my snippet of code:
//try{
finp = new FileReader("d:\\HelloWorld.doc");
// fout = new FileWriter("d:\\HelloWorld11.doc");
//while(finp.read()!=-1)
//{

int intRead= finp.read(b);
//fout.write(b);
input = new String(b);
System.out.println("" + input);
//}
finp.close();

[David Weitzman]

No.

[Dale DeMott]

Yes it is possible. The only thing you need to change in the code below is the MIME type. Keep in mind that the code below was written to stream PDF files. I didn't bother going through and changing the code to state that it is for Word files. So you'll see PDF referrals throughout the code. Anyway.. back to what I was talking about. Below you will need to change one line. The new line of code will be...

//MIME type of pdf doc
response.setContentType("application/word");

The great thing about the file streaming is that it comes up fast even w/larger files. I have 35 page documents come up very quickly. If you wanted to read Excel Spreadsheet programs you would change it to be....

//MIME type of pdf doc
response.setContentType("application/ms-excel");

Remember if you do this, the plug in must already be on the system for the browser to responde. I put some comments in the code showing you how to have the document come up in the browser window or in a seperate window.

public void dispatchPDF(String pdfFileToDispatch, HttpServletResponse response)
    throws FileNotFoundException, IOException {
    ServletOutputStream outStream = response.getOutputStream();
    //MIME type of pdf doc    
    response.setContentType("application/pdf");
    //
    //Using this header, you indecate that the content should be opened separately
    //(not actually in the browser) and that it should not be displayed automatically
    //but rather upon some further action by the user.
    //
    //uncommenting this will force the file to open outside of the browser
    //response.setHeader("Content-disposition", "attachment; filename=" + pdfFileToDispatch);
    
    //attachment - since we don't want to open it in the browser
    //but with Adobe Acrobat, and set the default file name to use.
    String fileURL = "http://localhost:8080/pdf/"+pdfFileToDispatch;
    URL url = new URL(fileURL);
    BufferedInputStream bis = new BufferedInputStream(url.openStream());
    BufferedOutputStream bos = new BufferedOutputStream(outStream);
    byte[] buffer = new byte[2048];
    int bytesRead;
    //Simple read/write loop
    while (-1 != (bytesRead = bis.read(buffer, 0, buffer.length))) {
    bos.write(buffer, 0, bytesRead);
    }
}

This code will probably sit in its own servlet. This method will be called by doGet or doPost depending on how you call it. From the signature of the code you can see I pass in the page to be dispatched. The pdf will be found from the root of the web directory.
I call my PDFServlet dispatcher by the following line...
http://localhost:8080/PDFServletController?pdfFileToDispatch=az_v1_va_simple_packet.pdf
In this code, the PDF files are referenced from the web root. So when you call the PDF files.. or you in your case your word files, you will need to start at / which will be server/web/. I put my files all under web/pdf/ Inside my code I hide the fact that I'm in 1 directory deeper inside of the pdf directory. Anyway.. give that a shot.. any questions, email me at [email protected]
Dale
[ August 22, 2002: Message edited by: Dale DeMott ]

[Ron Newman]

I don't see what browsers or MIME types or servlets have to do with this.
It seems to me like you'd need some kind of filter stream to extract the text from the Word document. Does standard Java provide one, or is there a third-party filter stream class that fills the bill?
[ August 22, 2002: Message edited by: Ron Newman ]

[Dale DeMott]

Actually you're right.. I was assuming a web environment..
Sorry...

[David Weitzman]

There are a lot of people anxiously waiting for the POI project at Jakarta to get a nice interface to MS Office formats, but unfortunately they haven't got much for the Word interface yet.

[parag Chatterjee]

yes,
actually POI project is in beta version I hope.
So,right now using pure java(I mean java io) there is no way you can read from a word document.
thanks everybody for their responses.
Parag

[Jim Yingst]

Putting it another way: you can certainly read the bytes using a FileInputStream. If you want to copy them to another location, for example, this is fine. But if you want to interpret them in any meaningful way, there's not really any good way to do that yet.

[Dmitry Shekhter]

i'm not sure where the word doc file is coming from, but if whoever is supplying the file can save it in MicrosoftWord as "plain text", then you don't have this problem.