| Version: 3.3.1

Public Member Functions | List of all members
wxTempFFile Class Reference
Class List by Category » File Handling

`#include <wx/ffile.h>`

## Detailed Description

wxTempFFile provides a relatively safe way to replace the contents of the existing file.

The name is explained by the fact that it may be also used as just a temporary file if you don't replace the old file contents.

Usually, when a program replaces the contents of some file it first opens it for writing, thus losing all of the old data and then starts recreating it. This approach is not very safe because during the regeneration of the file bad things may happen: the program may find that there is an internal error preventing it from completing file generation, the user may interrupt it (especially if file generation takes long time) and, finally, any other external interrupts (power supply failure or a disk error) will leave you without either the original file or the new one.

wxTempFFile addresses this problem by creating a temporary file which is meant to replace the original file - but only after it is fully written. So, if the user interrupts the program during the file generation, the old file won't be lost. Also, if the program discovers itself that it doesn't want to replace the old file there is no problem - in fact, wxTempFFile will not replace the old file by default, you should explicitly call wxTempFFile::Commit() to do it. Calling wxTempFFile::Discard() explicitly discards any modifications: it closes and deletes the temporary file and leaves the original file unchanged. If you call neither Commit() nor Discard(), the destructor will call Discard() automatically.

To summarize: if you want to replace another file, create an instance of wxTempFFile passing the name of the file to be replaced to the constructor. (You may also use default constructor and pass the file name to wxTempFFile::Open.) Then you can write to wxTempFFile using wxFFile-like functions and later call wxTempFFile::Commit() to replace the old file (and close this one) or call wxTempFFile::Discard() to cancel the modifications.

Since
  3.1.4

##

Library: wxBase
Category: File Handling

## Public Member Functions
| wxTempFFile ()
| Default constructor doesn't do anything. More...
| wxTempFFile (const wxString &strName)
| Associates wxTempFFile with the file to be replaced and opens it. More...
| ~wxTempFFile ()
| Destructor calls Discard() if temporary file is still open. More...
bool | Commit ()
| Validate changes: deletes the old file of name m_strName and renames the new file to the old name. More...
void | Discard ()
| Discard changes: the old file contents are not changed, the temporary file is deleted. More...
bool | Flush ()
| Flush the data written to the file to disk. More...
bool | IsOpened () const
| Returns true if the file was successfully opened. More...
wxFileOffset | Length () const
| Returns the length of the file. More...
bool | Open (const wxString &strName)
| Open the temporary file, returns true on success, false if an error occurred. More...
bool | Seek (wxFileOffset ofs, wxSeekMode mode=wxFromStart)
| Seeks to the specified position and returns true on success. More...
wxFileOffset | Tell () const
| Returns the current position. More...
bool | Write (const wxString &str, const wxMBConv &conv=wxMBConvUTF8())
| Writes the contents of the string to the file, returns true on success. More...

## Constructor & Destructor Documentation

## ◆ wxTempFFile() [1/2]

wxTempFFile::wxTempFFile | ( |  | ) |

Default constructor doesn't do anything.

Call Open() later.

## ◆ wxTempFFile() [2/2]

wxTempFFile::wxTempFFile | ( | const wxString & | strName | ) |
| explicit

Associates wxTempFFile with the file to be replaced and opens it.

Warning
  You should use IsOpened() to verify that the constructor succeeded.

## ◆ ~wxTempFFile()

wxTempFFile::~wxTempFFile | ( |  | ) |

Destructor calls Discard() if temporary file is still open.

## Member Function Documentation

## ◆ Commit()

bool wxTempFFile::Commit | ( |  | ) |

Validate changes: deletes the old file of name m_strName and renames the new file to the old name.

Returns true if both actions succeeded.

If false is returned it may unfortunately mean two quite different things: either that the old file couldn't be deleted or that the new file couldn't be renamed to the old name.

## ◆ Discard()

void wxTempFFile::Discard | ( |  | ) |

Discard changes: the old file contents are not changed, the temporary file is deleted.

## ◆ Flush()

bool wxTempFFile::Flush | ( |  | ) |

Flush the data written to the file to disk.

This simply calls wxFFile::Flush() for the underlying file and may be necessary with file systems such as XFS and Ext4 under Linux. Calling this function may however have serious performance implications and also is not necessary with many other file systems so it is not done by default – but you can call it before calling Commit() to absolutely ensure that the data was indeed written to the disk correctly.

## ◆ IsOpened()

bool wxTempFFile::IsOpened | ( |  | ) | const

Returns true if the file was successfully opened.

## ◆ Length()

wxFileOffset wxTempFFile::Length | ( |  | ) | const

Returns the length of the file.

Returns wxInvalidOffset if the length couldn't be determined.

Please also note that there is no guarantee that reading that many bytes from the file will always succeed. While this is true for regular files (unless the file size has been changed by another process in between Length() and Read() calls), some special files, such as most files under `/sys` or `/proc` directories under Linux, don't actually contain as much data as their size indicates.

## ◆ Open()

bool wxTempFFile::Open | ( | const wxString & | strName | ) |

Open the temporary file, returns true on success, false if an error occurred.

strName is the name of file to be replaced. The temporary file is always created in the directory where strName is. In particular, if strName doesn't include the path, it is created in the current directory and the program should have write access to it for the function to succeed.

## ◆ Seek()

bool wxTempFFile::Seek | ( | wxFileOffset | ofs,
|  | wxSeekMode | mode = `wxFromStart`
| ) |  |

Seeks to the specified position and returns true on success.

## ◆ Tell()

wxFileOffset wxTempFFile::Tell | ( |  | ) | const

Returns the current position.

## ◆ Write()

bool wxTempFFile::Write | ( | const wxString & | str,
|  | const wxMBConv & | conv = `wxMBConvUTF8()`
| ) |  |

Writes the contents of the string to the file, returns true on success.

The second argument is only meaningful in Unicode build of wxWidgets when conv is used to convert str to multibyte representation.