QFile Class

Detailed Description

QFile is an I/O device for reading and writing text and binary files and resources. A QFile may be used by itself or, more conveniently, with a QTextStream or QDataStream.

The file name is usually passed in the constructor, but it can be set at any time using setFileName(). QFile expects the file separator to be '/' regardless of operating system. The use of other separators (e.g., '\') is not supported.

You can check for a file's existence using exists(), and remove a file using remove(). (More advanced file system related operations are provided by QFileInfo and QDir.)

The file is opened with open(), closed with close(), and flushed with flush(). Data is usually read and written using QDataStream or QTextStream, but you can also call the QIODevice-inherited functions read(), readLine(), readAll(), write(). QFile also inherits getChar(), putChar(), and ungetChar(), which work one character at a time.

The size of the file is returned by size(). You can get the current file position using pos(), or move to a new file position using seek(). If you've reached the end of the file, atEnd() returns true.

Reading Files Directly

The following example reads a text file line by line:

    QFile file("in.txt");
    if (!file.open(QIODevice::ReadOnly | QIODevice::Text))
        return;

    while (!file.atEnd()) {
        QByteArray line = file.readLine();
        process_line(line);
    }

The QIODevice::Text flag passed to open() tells Qt to convert Windows-style line terminators ("\r\n") into C++-style terminators ("\n"). By default, QFile assumes binary, i.e. it doesn't perform any conversion on the bytes stored in the file.

Using Streams to Read Files

The next example uses QTextStream to read a text file line by line:

    QFile file("in.txt");
    if (!file.open(QIODevice::ReadOnly | QIODevice::Text))
        return;

    QTextStream in(&file);
    while (!in.atEnd()) {
        QString line = in.readLine();
        process_line(line);
    }

QTextStream takes care of converting the 8-bit data stored on disk into a 16-bit Unicode QString. By default, it assumes that the user system's local 8-bit encoding is used (e.g., UTF-8 on most unix based operating systems; see QTextCodec::codecForLocale() for details). This can be changed using QTextStream::setCodec().

To write text, we can use operator<<(), which is overloaded to take a QTextStream on the left and various data types (including QString) on the right:

    QFile file("out.txt");
    if (!file.open(QIODevice::WriteOnly | QIODevice::Text))
        return;

    QTextStream out(&file);
    out << "The magic number is: " << 49 << "\n";

QDataStream is similar, in that you can use operator<<() to write data and operator>>() to read it back. See the class documentation for details.

When you use QFile, QFileInfo, and QDir to access the file system with Qt, you can use Unicode file names. On Unix, these file names are converted to an 8-bit encoding. If you want to use standard C++ APIs (<cstdio> or <iostream>) or platform-specific APIs to access files instead of QFile, you can use the encodeName() and decodeName() functions to convert between Unicode file names and 8-bit file names.

On Unix, there are some special system files (e.g. in /proc) for which size() will always return 0, yet you may still be able to read more data from such a file; the data is generated in direct response to you calling read(). In this case, however, you cannot use atEnd() to determine if there is more data to read (since atEnd() will return true for a file that claims to have size 0). Instead, you should either call readAll(), or call read() or readLine() repeatedly until no more data can be read. The next example uses QTextStream to read /proc/modules line by line:

    QFile file("/proc/modules");
    if (!file.open(QIODevice::ReadOnly | QIODevice::Text))
        return;

    QTextStream in(&file);
    QString line = in.readLine();
    while (!line.isNull()) {
        process_line(line);
        line = in.readLine();
    }

Signals

Unlike other QIODevice implementations, such as QTcpSocket, QFile does not emit the aboutToClose(), bytesWritten(), or readyRead() signals. This implementation detail means that QFile is not suitable for reading and writing certain types of files, such as device files on Unix platforms.

Platform Specific Issues

File permissions are handled differently on Unix-like systems and Windows. In a non writable directory on Unix-like systems, files cannot be created. This is not always the case on Windows, where, for instance, the 'My Documents' directory usually is not writable, but it is still possible to create files in it.

Qt's understanding of file permissions is limited, which affects especially the QFile::setPermissions() function. On Windows, Qt will set only the legacy read-only flag, and that only when none of the Write* flags are passed. Qt does not manipulate access control lists (ACLs), which makes this function mostly useless for NTFS volumes. It may still be of use for USB sticks that use VFAT file systems. POSIX ACLs are not manipulated, either.

On Android, some limitations apply when dealing with content URIs:

• Access permissions might be needed by prompting the user through the QFileDialog which implements Android's native file picker.
• Aim to follow the Scoped storage guidelines, such as using app specific directories instead of other public external directories. For more information, also see storage best practices.
• Due to the design of Qt APIs (e.g. QFile), it's not possible to fully integrate the latter APIs with Android's MediaStore APIs.