How do I save a String to a text file using Java?

If you're simply outputting text, rather than any binary data, the following will work:

PrintWriter out = new PrintWriter("filename.txt");

Then, write your String to it, just like you would to any output stream:

out.println(text);

You'll need exception handling, as ever. Be sure to call out.close() when you've finished writing.

If you are using Java 7 or later, you can use the "try-with-resources statement" which will automatically close your PrintStream when you are done with it (ie exit the block) like so:

try (PrintWriter out = new PrintWriter("filename.txt")) {
    out.println(text);
}

You will still need to explicitly throw the java.io.FileNotFoundException as before.

Apache Commons IO contains some great methods for doing this, in particular FileUtils contains the following method:

static void writeStringToFile(File file, String data, Charset charset) 

which allows you to write text to a file in one method call:

FileUtils.writeStringToFile(new File("test.txt"), "Hello File", Charset.forName("UTF-8"));

You might also want to consider specifying the encoding for the file as well.

Take a look at the Java File API

a quick example:

try (PrintStream out = new PrintStream(new FileOutputStream("filename.txt"))) {
    out.print(text);
}

Just did something similar in my project. Use FileWriter will simplify part of your job. And here you can find nice tutorial.

BufferedWriter writer = null;
try
{
    writer = new BufferedWriter( new FileWriter( yourfilename));
    writer.write( yourstring);

}
catch ( IOException e)
{
}
finally
{
    try
    {
        if ( writer != null)
        writer.close( );
    }
    catch ( IOException e)
    {
    }
}

Use FileUtils.writeStringToFile() from Apache Commons IO. No need to reinvent this particular wheel.

In Java 11 the java.nio.file.Files class was extended by two new utility methods to write a string into a file. The first method (see JavaDoc here) uses the charset UTF-8 as default:

Files.writeString(Path.of("my", "path"), "My String");

And the second method (see JavaDoc here) allows to specify an individual charset:

Files.writeString(Path.of("my", "path"), "My String", StandardCharset.ISO_8859_1);

Both methods have an optional Varargs parameter for setting file handling options (see JavaDoc here). The following example would create a non-existing file or append the string to an existing one:

Files.writeString(Path.of("my", "path"), "String to append", StandardOpenOption.CREATE, StandardOpenOption.APPEND);

You can use the modify the code below to write your file from whatever class or function is handling the text. One wonders though why the world needs a new text editor...

import java.io.*;

public class Main {

    public static void main(String[] args) {

        try {
            String str = "SomeMoreTextIsHere";
            File newTextFile = new File("C:/thetextfile.txt");

            FileWriter fw = new FileWriter(newTextFile);
            fw.write(str);
            fw.close();

        } catch (IOException iox) {
            //do stuff with exception
            iox.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
}

private static void generateFile(String stringToWrite, String outputFile) {
    try {       
        FileWriter writer = new FileWriter(outputFile);
        writer.append(stringToWrite);
        writer.flush();
        writer.close();
        log.debug("New File is generated ==>"+outputFile);
    } catch (Exception exp) {
        log.error("Exception in generateFile ", exp);
    }
}

Basically the same answer as here, but easy to copy/paste, and it just works ;-)

  import java.io.FileWriter;

  public void saveToFile(String data, String filename) {
    try (
      FileWriter fw = new FileWriter(filename)) {
      fw.write(data);
    } catch (Exception e) {
      throw new RuntimeException(e);
    }
  }

It's better to close the writer/outputstream in a finally block, just in case something happen

finally{
   if(writer != null){
     try{
        writer.flush();
        writer.close();
     }
     catch(IOException ioe){
         ioe.printStackTrace();
     }
   }
}

I think the best way is using Files.write(Path path, Iterable<? extends CharSequence> lines, OpenOption... options):

String text = "content";
Path path = Paths.get("path", "to", "file");
Files.write(path, Arrays.asList(text));

See javadoc:

Write lines of text to a file. Each line is a char sequence and is written to the file in sequence with each line terminated by the platform's line separator, as defined by the system property line.separator. Characters are encoded into bytes using the specified charset.

The options parameter specifies how the the file is created or opened. If no options are present then this method works as if the CREATE, TRUNCATE_EXISTING, and WRITE options are present. In other words, it opens the file for writing, creating the file if it doesn't exist, or initially truncating an existing regular-file to a size of 0. The method ensures that the file is closed when all lines have been written (or an I/O error or other runtime exception is thrown). If an I/O error occurs then it may do so after the file has created or truncated, or after some bytes have been written to the file.

Please note. I see people have already answered with Java's built-in Files.write, but what's special in my answer which nobody seems to mention is the overloaded version of the method which takes an Iterable of CharSequence (i.e. String), instead of a byte[] array, thus text.getBytes() is not required, which is a bit cleaner I think.

If you wish to keep the carriage return characters from the string into a file here is an code example:

    jLabel1 = new JLabel("Enter SQL Statements or SQL Commands:");
    orderButton = new JButton("Execute");
    textArea = new JTextArea();
    ...


    // String captured from JTextArea()
    orderButton.addActionListener(new ActionListener() {
        public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent ae) {
            // When Execute button is pressed
            String tempQuery = textArea.getText();
            tempQuery = tempQuery.replaceAll("\n", "\r\n");
            try (PrintStream out = new PrintStream(new FileOutputStream("C:/Temp/tempQuery.sql"))) {
                out.print(tempQuery);
            } catch (FileNotFoundException e) {
                // TODO Auto-generated catch block
                e.printStackTrace();
            }
            System.out.println(tempQuery);
        }

    });

I have published a library that saves files, and handles everything with one line of code only, you can find it here along with its documentation

Github repository

and the answer to your question is so easy

String path = FileSaver
        .get()
        .save(string.getBytes(),"file.txt");

My way is based on stream due to running on all Android versions and needs of fecthing resources such as URL/URI, any suggestion is welcome.

As far as concerned, streams (InputStream and OutputStream) transfer binary data, when developer goes to write a string to a stream, must first convert it to bytes, or in other words encode it.

public boolean writeStringToFile(File file, String string, Charset charset) {
    if (file == null) return false;
    if (string == null) return false;
    return writeBytesToFile(file, string.getBytes((charset == null) ? DEFAULT_CHARSET:charset));
}

public boolean writeBytesToFile(File file, byte[] data) {
    if (file == null) return false;
    if (data == null) return false;
    FileOutputStream fos;
    BufferedOutputStream bos;
    try {
        fos = new FileOutputStream(file);
        bos = new BufferedOutputStream(fos);
        bos.write(data, 0, data.length);
        bos.flush();
        bos.close();
        fos.close();
    } catch (IOException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
        Logger.e("!!! IOException");
        return false;
    }
    return true;
}