Restore wxFile docs
[wxWidgets.git] / interface / wx / file.h
1 /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
2 // Name: file.h
3 // Purpose: interface of wxTempFile
4 // Author: wxWidgets team
5 // RCS-ID: $Id$
6 // Licence: wxWindows license
7 /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
8
9 /**
10 @class wxTempFile
11
12 wxTempFile provides a relatively safe way to replace the contents of the
13 existing file. The name is explained by the fact that it may be also used as
14 just a temporary file if you don't replace the old file contents.
15
16 Usually, when a program replaces the contents of some file it first opens it for
17 writing, thus losing all of the old data and then starts recreating it. This
18 approach is not very safe because during the regeneration of the file bad things
19 may happen: the program may find that there is an internal error preventing it
20 from completing file generation, the user may interrupt it (especially if file
21 generation takes long time) and, finally, any other external interrupts (power
22 supply failure or a disk error) will leave you without either the original file
23 or the new one.
24
25 wxTempFile addresses this problem by creating a temporary file which is meant to
26 replace the original file - but only after it is fully written. So, if the user
27 interrupts the program during the file generation, the old file won't be lost.
28 Also, if the program discovers itself that it doesn't want to replace the old
29 file there is no problem - in fact, wxTempFile will @b not replace the old
30 file by default, you should explicitly call wxTempFile::Commit
31 to do it. Calling wxTempFile::Discard explicitly discards any
32 modifications: it closes and deletes the temporary file and leaves the original
33 file unchanged. If you don't call neither of Commit() and Discard(), the
34 destructor will call Discard() automatically.
35
36 To summarize: if you want to replace another file, create an instance of
37 wxTempFile passing the name of the file to be replaced to the constructor (you
38 may also use default constructor and pass the file name to
39 wxTempFile::Open). Then you can wxTempFile::write
40 to wxTempFile using wxFile-like functions and later call
41 Commit() to replace the old file (and close this one) or call Discard() to
42 cancel
43 the modifications.
44
45 @library{wxbase}
46 @category{file}
47 */
48 class wxTempFile
49 {
50 public:
51 /**
52 Associates wxTempFile with the file to be replaced and opens it. You should use
53 IsOpened() to verify if the constructor succeeded.
54 */
55 wxTempFile(const wxString& strName);
56
57 /**
58 Destructor calls Discard() if temporary file
59 is still opened.
60 */
61 ~wxTempFile();
62
63 /**
64 Validate changes: deletes the old file of name m_strName and renames the new
65 file to the old name. Returns @true if both actions succeeded. If @false is
66 returned it may unfortunately mean two quite different things: either that
67 either the old file couldn't be deleted or that the new file couldn't be renamed
68 to the old name.
69 */
70 bool Commit();
71
72 /**
73 Discard changes: the old file contents is not changed, temporary file is
74 deleted.
75 */
76 void Discard();
77
78 /**
79 Returns @true if the file was successfully opened.
80 */
81 bool IsOpened() const;
82
83 /**
84 Returns the length of the file.
85 */
86 wxFileOffset Length() const;
87
88 /**
89 Open the temporary file, returns @true on success, @false if an error
90 occurred.
91 @a strName is the name of file to be replaced. The temporary file is always
92 created in the directory where @a strName is. In particular, if
93 @a strName doesn't include the path, it is created in the current directory
94 and the program should have write access to it for the function to succeed.
95 */
96 bool Open(const wxString& strName);
97
98 /**
99 Seeks to the specified position.
100 */
101 wxFileOffset Seek(wxFileOffset ofs,
102 wxSeekMode mode = wxFromStart);
103
104 /**
105 Returns the current position or wxInvalidOffset if file is not opened or if
106 another
107 error occurred.
108 */
109 wxFileOffset Tell() const;
110
111 /**
112 Write to the file, return @true on success, @false on failure.
113 The second argument is only meaningful in Unicode build of wxWidgets when
114 @a conv is used to convert @a str to multibyte representation.
115 */
116 bool Write(const wxString& str,
117 const wxMBConv& conv = wxConvUTF8);
118 };
119
120
121
122 /**
123 @class wxFile
124
125 A wxFile performs raw file I/O. This is a very small class designed to
126 minimize the overhead of using it - in fact, there is hardly any overhead at
127 all, but using it brings you automatic error checking and hides differences
128 between platforms and compilers. wxFile also automatically closes the file in
129 its destructor making it unnecessary to worry about forgetting to do it.
130 wxFile is a wrapper around @c file descriptor. - see also
131 wxFFile for a wrapper around @c FILE structure.
132
133 @c wxFileOffset is used by the wxFile functions which require offsets as
134 parameter or return them. If the platform supports it, wxFileOffset is a typedef
135 for a native 64 bit integer, otherwise a 32 bit integer is used for
136 wxFileOffset.
137
138 @library{wxbase}
139 @category{file}
140 */
141 class wxFile
142 {
143 public:
144 /**
145 Opening mode
146 */
147 enum OpenMode { read, write, read_write, write_append, write_excl };
148
149 /**
150 Standard file descriptors
151 */
152 enum { fd_invalid = -1, fd_stdin, fd_stdout, fd_stderr };
153
154 /**
155 Default constructor.
156 */
157 wxFile();
158
159 /**
160 Opens a file with a filename.
161
162 @param filename
163 The filename.
164 @param mode
165 The mode in which to open the file. May be one of @c wxFile::read,
166 @c wxFile::write and @c wxFile::read_write.
167 */
168 wxFile(const wxString& filename,
169 wxFile::OpenMode mode = wxFile::read);
170 /**
171 Associates the file with the given file descriptor, which has already been
172 opened. See Attach() for the list of predefined descriptors.
173
174 @param fd
175 An existing file descriptor.
176 */
177 wxFile(int fd);
178
179 /**
180 Destructor will close the file.
181 @note it is not virtual so you should not use wxFile polymorphically.
182 */
183 ~wxFile();
184
185 /**
186 This function verifies if we may access the given file in specified mode.
187 Only values of @c wxFile::read or @c wxFile::write really make sense here.
188 */
189 static bool Access(const wxString& name, OpenMode mode);
190
191 /**
192 Attaches an existing file descriptor to the wxFile object. Example of
193 predefined file descriptors are 0, 1 and 2 which correspond to stdin,
194 stdout and stderr (and have symbolic names of @c wxFile::fd_stdin,
195 @c wxFile::fd_stdout and @c wxFile::fd_stderr).
196
197 The descriptor should be already opened and it will be closed by wxFile
198 object.
199 */
200 void Attach(int fd);
201
202 /**
203 Closes the file.
204 */
205 void Close();
206
207 /**
208 Creates a file for writing. If the file already exists, setting @b overwrite to
209 @true
210 will ensure it is overwritten.
211 */
212 bool Create(const wxString& filename, bool overwrite = false,
213 int access = wxS_DEFAULT);
214
215 /**
216 Get back a file descriptor from wxFile object - the caller is responsible for
217 closing the file if this
218 descriptor is opened. IsOpened() will return @false after call to Detach().
219 */
220 void Detach();
221
222 /**
223 Returns @true if the end of the file has been reached.
224 Note that the behaviour of the file pointer based class
225 wxFFile is different as wxFFile::Eof will return @true here only if an
226 attempt has been made to read @b past the last byte of the file, while
227 wxFile::Eof() will return @true even before such attempt is made if the
228 file pointer is at the last position in the file.
229
230 Note also that this function doesn't work on unseekable file descriptors
231 (examples include pipes, terminals and sockets under Unix) and an attempt to
232 use it will result in an error message in such case. So, to read the entire
233 file into memory, you should write a loop which uses
234 Read() repeatedly and tests its return condition instead
235 of using Eof() as this will not work for special files under Unix.
236 */
237 bool Eof() const;
238
239 /**
240 Returns @true if the given name specifies an existing regular file (not a
241 directory or a link)
242 */
243 static bool Exists(const wxString& filename);
244
245 /**
246 Flushes the file descriptor.
247 Note that Flush() is not implemented on some Windows compilers
248 due to a missing fsync function, which reduces the usefulness of this function
249 (it can still be called but it will do nothing on unsupported compilers).
250 */
251 bool Flush();
252
253 /**
254 Returns the type of the file. Possible return values are:
255 */
256 wxFileKind GetKind() const;
257
258 /**
259 Returns @true if the file has been opened.
260 */
261 bool IsOpened() const;
262
263 /**
264 Returns the length of the file.
265 */
266 wxFileOffset Length() const;
267
268 /**
269 Opens the file, returning @true if successful.
270
271 @param filename
272 The filename.
273 @param mode
274 The mode in which to open the file. May be one of read(), write() and
275 wxFile::read_write.
276 */
277 bool Open(const wxString& filename,
278 wxFile::OpenMode mode = wxFile::read);
279
280 /**
281 Reads from the file into a memory buffer.
282
283 @param buffer
284 Buffer to write in
285 @param count
286 Bytes to read
287
288 @return The number of bytes read, or the symbol wxInvalidOffset
289 */
290 size_t Read(void* buffer, size_t count);
291
292 /**
293 Seeks to the specified position.
294
295 @param ofs
296 Offset to seek to.
297 @param mode
298 One of wxFromStart, wxFromEnd, wxFromCurrent.
299
300 @return The actual offset position achieved, or wxInvalidOffset on
301 failure.
302 */
303 wxFileOffset Seek(wxFileOffset ofs,
304 wxSeekMode mode = wxFromStart);
305
306 /**
307 Moves the file pointer to the specified number of bytes relative to the end of
308 the file. For example, @c SeekEnd(-5) would position the pointer 5
309 bytes before the end.
310
311 @param ofs
312 Number of bytes before the end of the file.
313
314 @return The actual offset position achieved, or wxInvalidOffset on
315 failure.
316 */
317 wxFileOffset SeekEnd(wxFileOffset ofs = 0);
318
319 /**
320 Returns the current position or wxInvalidOffset if file is not opened or
321 if another error occurred.
322 */
323 wxFileOffset Tell() const;
324
325 /**
326 Write data to the file (descriptor).
327
328 @buffer
329 Buffer from which to read data
330 @param count
331 Number of bytes to write
332
333 @return The number of bytes written.
334 */
335 size_t Write(const void *buffer, size_t count);
336
337 /**
338 Writes the contents of the string to the file, returns @true on success.
339 The second argument is only meaningful in Unicode build of wxWidgets when
340 @a conv is used to convert @a s to a multibyte representation.
341 Note that this method only works with @c NUL-terminated strings, if you want
342 to write data with embedded @c NULs to the file you should use the other
343 Write() overload.
344 */
345 bool Write(const wxString& s, const wxMBConv& conv = wxConvUTF8);
346
347 /**
348 Returns the file descriptor associated with the file.
349 */
350 int fd() const;
351 };
352