Write HTML file using Java

Question

I want my Java application to write HTML code in a file  Right now  I am hard coding HTML tags using java io BufferedWriter class  For Example   BufferedWriter bw   new BufferedWriter new FileWriter file    bw write   lt html gt  lt head gt  lt title gt New Page lt  title gt  lt  head gt  lt body gt  lt p gt This is Body lt  p gt  lt  body gt  lt  html gt     bw close      Is there any easier way to do this  as I have to create tables and it is becoming very inconvenient

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If you are willing to use Groovy  the MarkupBuilder is very convenient for this sort of thing  but I don t know that Java has anything like it    http   groovy codehaus org Creating XML using Groovy s MarkupBuilder

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You can use jsoup or wffweb  HTML5  based   Sample code for jsoup -  Document doc   Jsoup parse   lt html gt  lt  html gt     doc body   addClass  body-styles-cls    doc body   appendElement  div    System out println doc toString       prints   lt html gt    lt head gt  lt  head gt    lt body class   body-styles-cls  gt     lt div gt  lt  div gt    lt  body gt   lt  html gt    Sample code for wffweb -  Html html   new Html null         new Head this       new Body this          new ClassAttribute  body-styles-cls          Body body   TagRepository findOneTagAssignableToTag Body class  html   body appendChild new Div null     System out println html toHtmlString       directly writes to file html toOutputStream new FileOutputStream   home user filepath filename html     UTF-8      prints  in minified format  -   lt html gt   lt head gt  lt  head gt   lt body class  body-styles-cls  gt       lt div gt  lt  div gt   lt  body gt   lt  html gt

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I had also problems in finding something simple to satisfy my needs so I decided to write my own library  with MIT license    It s mainly based on composite and builder pattern    A basic declarative example is   import static com github manliogit javatags lang HtmlHelper     html5 attr  lang - gt  en      head      meta attr  http-equiv - gt  Content-Type    content - gt  text html  charset UTF-8         title  title        link attr  href - gt  xxx css    rel - gt  stylesheet          render      A fluent example is   ul      add li  item 1       add li  item 2       add li  item 3           You can check more examples here  I also created an on line converter to transform every html snippet  from complex bootstrap template to simple single snippet  on the fly  i e  html -  javatags

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It really depends on the type of HTML file you re creating   For such tasks  I use to create an object  serialize it to XML  then transform it with XSL  The pros of this approach are    The strict separation between source code and HTML template  The possibility to edit HTML without having to recompile the application  The ability to serve different HTML in different cases based on the same XML  or even serve XML directly when needed  for a further deserialization for example   The shorter amount of code to write    The cons are    You must know XSLT and know how to implement it in Java  You must write XSLT  and it s torture for many developers   When transforming XML to HTML with XSLT  some parts may be tricky  Few examples   lt textarea  gt  tags  which make the page unusable   XML declaration  which can cause problems with IE   whitespace  with  lt pre gt  lt  pre gt  tags etc    HTML entities   amp nbsp    etc  The performance will be reduced  since serialization to XML wastes lots of CPU resources and XSL transformation is very costly too    Now  if your HTML is very short or very repetitive or if the HTML has a volatile structure which changes dynamically  this approach must not be taken in account  On the other hand  if you serve HTML files which have all a similar structure and you want to reduce the amount of Java code and use templates  this approach may work

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If you want to do that yourself  without using any external library  a clean way would be to create a template html file with all the static content  like for example    lt  DOCTYPE html PUBLIC  -  W3C  DTD HTML 4 01 Transitional  EN    http   www w3 org TR html4 loose dtd  gt   lt html gt   lt head gt   lt meta http-equiv  Content-Type  content  text html  charset UTF-8  gt   lt title gt  title lt  title gt   lt  head gt   lt body gt  body  lt  body gt   lt  html gt    Put a tag like  tag for any dynamic content and then do something like this   File htmlTemplateFile   new File  path template html    String htmlString   FileUtils readFileToString htmlTemplateFile   String title    New Page   String body    This is Body   htmlString   htmlString replace   title   title   htmlString   htmlString replace   body   body   File newHtmlFile   new File  path new html    FileUtils writeStringToFile newHtmlFile  htmlString     Note  I used org apache commons io FileUtils for simplicity

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I would highly recommend you use a very simple templating language such as Freemarker

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Templates and other methods based on preliminary creation of the document in memory are likely to impose certain limits on resulting document size   Meanwhile a very straightforward and reliable write-on-the-fly approach to creation of plain HTML exists  based on a SAX handler and default XSLT transformer  the latter having intrinsic capability of HTML output   String encoding    UTF-8   FileOutputStream fos   new FileOutputStream  myfile html    OutputStreamWriter writer   new OutputStreamWriter fos  encoding   StreamResult streamResult   new StreamResult writer    SAXTransformerFactory saxFactory        SAXTransformerFactory  TransformerFactory newInstance    TransformerHandler tHandler   saxFactory newTransformerHandler    tHandler setResult streamResult    Transformer transformer   tHandler getTransformer    transformer setOutputProperty OutputKeys METHOD   html    transformer setOutputProperty OutputKeys ENCODING  encoding   transformer setOutputProperty OutputKeys INDENT   yes     writer write   lt  DOCTYPE html gt  n    writer flush    tHandler startDocument        tHandler startElement          html   new AttributesImpl             tHandler startElement          head   new AttributesImpl                 tHandler startElement          title   new AttributesImpl                     tHandler characters  Hello  toCharArray    0  5               tHandler endElement          title            tHandler endElement          head            tHandler startElement          body   new AttributesImpl                 tHandler startElement          p   new AttributesImpl                     tHandler characters  5  gt  3  toCharArray    0  5      note   gt   character             tHandler endElement          p            tHandler endElement          body        tHandler endElement          html    tHandler endDocument    writer close      Note that XSLT transformer will release you from the burden of escaping special characters like  gt   as it takes necessary care of it by itself   And it is easy to wrap SAX methods like startElement   and characters   to something more convenient to one s taste

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if it is becoming repetitive work   i think you shud do code reuse   why dont you simply write functions that  write  small building blocks of HTML  get the idea  see Eg  you can have a function to which you could pass a string and it would automatically put that into a paragraph tag and present it  Of course you would also need to write some kind of a basic parser to do this  how would the function know where to attach the paragraph    i dont think you are  a beginner    so i am not elaborating     do tell me if you do not understand

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A few months ago I had the same problem and every library I found provides too much functionality and complexity for my final goal  So I end up developing my own library - HtmlFlow - that provides a very simple and intuitive API that allows me to write HTML in a fluent style  Check it here  https   github com fmcarvalho HtmlFlow  it also supports dynamic binding to HTML elements   Here is an example of binding the properties of a Task object into HTML elements  Consider a Task Java class with three properties  Title  Description and a Priority and then we can produce an HTML document for a Task object in the following way   import htmlflow HtmlView   import model Priority  import model Task   import java io FileOutputStream  import java io IOException  import java io PrintStream   public class App        private static HtmlView lt Task gt  taskDetailsView            HtmlView lt Task gt  taskView   new HtmlView lt  gt             taskView                  head                    title  Task Details                    linkCss  https   maxcdn bootstrapcdn com bootstrap 3 3 6 css bootstrap min css            taskView                  body   classAttr  container                    heading 1   Task Details                    hr                    div                    text  Title     text Task  getTitle                   br                    text  Description     text Task  getDescription                   br                    text  Priority     text Task  getPriority           return taskView             public static void main String    args  throws IOException          HtmlView lt Task gt  taskView   taskDetailsView            Task task    new Task  Special dinner    Have dinner with someone    Priority Normal            try PrintStream out   new PrintStream new FileOutputStream  Task html                  taskView setPrintStream out  write task               Desktop getDesktop   browse URI create  Task html

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Velocity is a good candidate for writing this kind of stuff  It allows you to keep your html and data-generation code as separated as possible

[java] Write HTML file using Java

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