JavaDBF

JavaDBF is a Java library for reading and writing XBase files. There are plenty of legacy applications around with .dbf as their primary storage format. JavaDBF was initially written for data transfer with such applications.

License

JavaDBF is LGPL

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl.txt

Introduction

Till late 90s dBase and its cousins were the most preferred database platform for small and even medium enterprise applications. They required low hardware configurations and were cheaper to develop. Eventually more capable desktop databases like Microsoft Access came into picture, DBF file format still remains one of the simplest way to store and transfer data.

News and changes in version 1.0.0

Possible breaking changes

JavaDBF 1.0.0 is the first release considered stable. It has a lot of improvements and is almost compatible with old code. But there are some small changes that may break your code:

• Numeric and Double types (N and F) are now returned as BigDecimal instead of Double.
• DBFException is now a RuntimeException, not need to explictitly catch or rethrow, but yo can if you wish.
• Character data is now trimmed tailing white spaces. You can disable it calling reader.setTrimRightSpaces(false)

News

• Support for dbase Level 7 databases.
• Support for new field types.
  • Support for memo text and binary types (M, B, G, P) via external file (fpt or dbt)
  • Support for varchar (V) fields
  • Support for double (O) fields
  • Support for double (B) fields
  • Support for long character (up to 65534 bytes) fields

Getting and Installing

Obtain the latest version of JavaDBF from release page at github. Download the jar file and put it in your $CLASSPATH variable. You are ready to go.

Getting with Maven

If you are using Maven, you can add JavaDBF to your project using this dependency in your pom.xml

	<dependency>
		<groupId>com.github.albfernandez</groupId>
		<artifactId>javadbf</artifactId>
		<version>1.13.1</version>
	</dependency>

Overview of the Library

JavaDBF has a simple API of its own and it does not implement the JDBC API. It is designed this way because JavaDBF is not intended to support full-blown RDBMS-style database interaction. And you are not supposed to use it like a back-end; it just doesn't work that way. Also, JavaDBF is not designed to be thread-safe; keep that in mind when you design multithreaded applications.

JavaDBF comes in the package com.linuxense.javadbf. Import that package in your Java code. Following examples will familiarise you with its APIs.

Data Type Mapping

JavaDBF supports almost all XBase data types. While reading, those types are interpretted as appropriate Java types. Following tables shows the mapping scheme.

Read and write supported types

XBase Type	XBase Symbol	Java Type used in JavaDBF
Character	C	java.lang.String
Numeric	N	java.math.BigDecimal
Floating Point	F	java.math.BigDecimal
Logical	L	java.lang.Boolean
Date	D	java.util.Date

Read supported types

FoxPro Type	Symbol	Java Type used in JavaDBF
Currency	Y	java.math.BigDecimal
Long	I	java.lang.Integer
Date Type	T	java.util.Date
Timestamp	@	java.util.Date
AutoIncrement	+	java.lang.Integer
Memo	M	java.lang.String or byte[]
Binary	B	byte[] or java.lang.Double
Blob	W	byte[]
General	G	byte[]
Picture	P	byte[]
VarBinary	Q	byte[]
Varchar	V	java.lang.String
Double	O	java.lang.Double

Reading a DBF File

To read a DBF file, JavaDBF provides a DBFReader class. Following is a ready-to-compile, self-explanatory program describing almost all feature of the DBFReader class. Copy/paste this listing and compile it. Keep a .dbf file handy to pass to this program as its argument.

import java.io.*;
import com.linuxense.javadbf.*;

public class JavaDBFReaderTest {

	public static void main(String args[]) {

		DBFReader reader = null;
		try {

			// create a DBFReader object
			reader = new DBFReader(new FileInputStream(args[0]));

			// get the field count if you want for some reasons like the following

			int numberOfFields = reader.getFieldCount();

			// use this count to fetch all field information
			// if required

			for (int i = 0; i < numberOfFields; i++) {

				DBFField field = reader.getField(i);

				// do something with it if you want
				// refer the JavaDoc API reference for more details
				//
				System.out.println(field.getName());
			}

			// Now, lets us start reading the rows

			Object[] rowObjects;

			while ((rowObjects = reader.nextRecord()) != null) {

				for (int i = 0; i < rowObjects.length; i++) {
					System.out.println(rowObjects[i]);
				}
			}

			// By now, we have iterated through all of the rows

		} catch (DBFException e) {
			e.printStackTrace();
		} catch (IOException e) {
			e.printStackTrace();
		}
		finally {
			DBFUtils.close(reader);
		}
	}
}

Reading a DBF File using field names

From JavaDBF 1.7.0 you can use field names to access data. You must use nextRow instead nextRecord

import java.io.*;

import com.linuxense.javadbf.*;

public class JavaDBFReaderWithFieldNamesTest {


	public static void main(String args[]) {

		DBFReader reader = null;
		try {

			// create a DBFReader object
			reader = new DBFReader(new FileInputStream(args[0]));

			// get the field count if you want for some reasons like the following

			int numberOfFields = reader.getFieldCount();

			// use this count to fetch all field information
			// if required

			for (int i = 0; i < numberOfFields; i++) {

				DBFField field = reader.getField(i);

				// do something with it if you want
				// refer the JavaDoc API reference for more details
				//
				System.out.println(field.getName());
			}

			// Now, lets us start reading the rows

			DBFRow row;

			while ((row = reader.nextRow()) != null) {
				System.out.println(row.getString("PHONE"));
			}

			// By now, we have iterated through all of the rows

		} catch (DBFException e) {
			e.printStackTrace();
		} catch (IOException e) {
			e.printStackTrace();
		}
		finally {
			DBFUtils.close(reader);
		}
	}
}

Reading a DBF File with memo file

You can specify memo file to read Memo fields from. If you don't specify this file this fields will be filled with null

import java.io.*;
import com.linuxense.javadbf.*;

public class JavaDBFReaderMemoTest {

	public static void main(String args[]) {
		DBFReader reader = null;
		try {

			// create a DBFReader object
			reader = new DBFReader(new FileInputStream(args[0]));

			reader.setMemoFile(new File("memo.dbt"));

			// do whatever you want with the data

		} catch (DBFException e) {
			e.printStackTrace();
		} catch (IOException e) {
			e.printStackTrace();
		} finally {
			DBFUtils.close(reader);
		}
	}
}

Writing a DBF File

The class complementary to DBFReader is the DBFWriter. While creating a .dbf data file you will have to deal with two aspects:

1. define the fields and
2. populate data.

As mentioned above a dbf field is represented by the class DBFField. First, let us familiarise this class.

Defining Fields

Create an object of DBFField class:

	DBFField field = new DBFField();
	field.setName("emp_name"); // give a name to the field
	field.setType(DBFDataType.CHARACTER); // and set its type
	field.setLength(25); // and length of the field

This is, now, a complete DBFField Object ready to use. We have to create as many DBFField Objects as we want to be in the .dbf file. The DBFWriter class accept DBFField in an array. Now, let's move on to the next step of populating data.

Preparing DBFWriter Object

A DBFWriter is used for creating a .dbf file. First lets create a DBFWriter object by calling its constructor and then set the fields created (as explained above) by calling the setFields method.

	OutputStream os = // wathever output you want to use
	DBFWriter writer = new DBFWriter(os);
	// fields is a non-empty array of DBFField objects
	writer.setFields(fields); 

Now, the DBFWriter Object is ready to be populated. The method for adding data to the DBFWriter is addRecord and it takes an Object array as its argument. This Object array is supposed contain values for the fields added with one-to-one correspondence with the fields set.

Following is a complete program explaining all the steps described above:

import com.linuxense.javadbf.*;
import java.io.*;

public class JavaDBFWriterTest {

	public static void main(String args[]) throws IOException {

		// let us create field definitions first
		// we will go for 3 fields

		DBFField[] fields = new DBFField[3];

		fields[0] = new DBFField();
		fields[0].setName("emp_code");
		fields[0].setType(DBFDataType.CHARACTER);
		fields[0].setLength(10);

		fields[1] = new DBFField();
		fields[1].setName("emp_name");
		fields[1].setType(DBFDataType.CHARACTER);
		fields[1].setLength(20);

		fields[2] = new DBFField();
		fields[2].setName("salary");
		fields[2].setType(DBFDataType.NUMERIC);
		fields[2].setLength(12);
		fields[2].setDecimalCount(2);

		DBFWriter writer = new DBFWriter(new FileOutputStream(args[0]));
		writer.setFields(fields);

		// now populate DBFWriter

		Object rowData[] = new Object[3];
		rowData[0] = "1000";
		rowData[1] = "John";
		rowData[2] = new Double(5000.00);

		writer.addRecord(rowData);

		rowData = new Object[3];
		rowData[0] = "1001";
		rowData[1] = "Lalit";
		rowData[2] = new Double(3400.00);

		writer.addRecord(rowData);

		rowData = new Object[3];
		rowData[0] = "1002";
		rowData[1] = "Rohit";
		rowData[2] = new Double(7350.00);

		writer.addRecord(rowData);

		// write to file
		writer.close();
	}
}

Keep in mind that till the close method is called, all the added data will be kept in memory. So, if you are planning to write huge amount of data make sure that it will be safely held in memory till it is written to disk and the DBFWriter object is garbage-collected. Read the Sync Mode section to know how JavaDBF to use a special feature of JavaDBF to overcome this.

Sync Mode: Writing Records to File as They are Added

This is useful when JavaDBF is used to create a DBF with very large number of records. In this mode, instead of keeping records in memory for writing them once for all, records are written to file as addRecord() is called. Here is how to write in Sync Mode.

Create DBFWriter instance by passing a File object which represents a new/non-existent or empty file. And you are done! But, as in the normal mode, remember to call close() when have added all the records. This will help JavaDBF to write the meta data with correct values. Here is a sample code:

import com.linuxense.javadbf.*;
import java.io.*;

public class DBFWriterTest {

  public static void main(String args[]) throws  IOException {

    // ...

    DBFWriter writer = new DBFWriter(new File("/path/to/a/new/file")); 
    // this DBFWriter object is now in Sync Mode
    
    // set fields 
    writer.setFields(fields);
    
    // add the data
    writer.addRecord(rowData);
    
    // close
    writer.close();

    // ...
  }
}

Appending Records

From version 0.4.0 onwards JavaDBF supports appending of records to an existing DBF file. Use the same constructor used in Sync Mode to achieve this. But here the File object passed to the construction should represent the DBF file to which records are to be appended.

It is illegal to call setFields in DBFWriter object created for appending. Here also it is required to call the close() method after adding all the records.

import com.linuxense.javadbf.*;
import java.io.*;

public class DBFWriterTest {

  public static void main(String args[]) throws IOException {

    // ...

    DBFWriter writer = new DBFWriter(new File("/path/to/an/existing/dbfile")); 
    // this DBFWriter object is now in Syc Mode
    
    // add the data (no setFields, because it's an existing file)
    writer.addRecord(rowData);
    
    // close
    writer.close();

    // ...
  }
}

Building from sources

Clone the repository or download de tar file from releases page on github, then run the Maven command:

git clone https://github.com/albfernandez/javadbf.git
cd javadbf
mvn clean package

The result file is target/javadbf-x.xx.x.jar

Links

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.dbf

http://www.clicketyclick.dk/databases/xbase/format/index.html

http://www.dbase.com/Knowledgebase/INT/db7_file_fmt.htm

http://devzone.advantagedatabase.com/dz/webhelp/advantage9.0/server1/dbf_field_types_and_specifications.htm

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/st4a0s68%28VS.80%29.aspx