In this chapter, we continue our exploration of the Java API by
looking at many of the classes in the java.io and java.nio packages. These
packages offer a rich set of tools for basic I/O and also provide the
framework on which all file and network communication in Java is
built.
Figure 12-1 shows the class hierarchy of these packages.
We’ll start by looking at the stream classes in java.io, which are subclasses of the basic
InputStream, OutputStream, Reader, and Writer classes. Then we’ll examine the File class and discuss how you can read and write
files using classes in java.io. We also
take a quick look at data compression and serialization. Along the way,
we’ll also introduce the java.nio
package. The NIO, or “new” I/O, package (introduced in Java 1.4) adds
significant functionality tailored for building high-performance services
and in some cases simply provides newer, better APIs that can be used in
place of some java.io features.
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