Java – Reads from a file and displays random lines

I’m trying to get my android app to read from a text file and randomly select an entry and then display it, how do I do that? I guess I have to use a buffer reader or input stream commands, but I don’t know how to use these, I tried googling but didn’t find much help.

As far as I understand (with some help) I have to read the text file, add it to the string? And use the following command to randomly select an entry

Random.nextInt(String[].length-1).

What should I do? :\I’m pretty new to all these buffer readers and stuff.

You are asking about 2 different operations here. Do not confuse them and thus confuse the problem. You want to know how:

1. Read files from disk into a set of strings.

2. Randomly select a string from a set of strings.

   // Read in the file into a list of strings
   BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new FileReader("inputfile.txt"));
   List<String> lines = new ArrayList<String>();
   
   String line = reader.readLine();
   
   while( line != null ) {
       lines.add(line);
       line = reader.readLine();
   }
   
    Choose a random one from the list
   Random r = new Random();
   String randomString = lines.get(r.nextInt(lines.size()));