title: Address book that reads and write from a data file
body: <p>I'm doing a small program an <em>addressbook</em> that allows the user to: <em>add contact, search contact and delete contact</em>. All of this data is read and written to <em>.dat file</em>.</p>
  
  <p>Also, how would you create a layout in the data file, (i.e. name, lastname, address and number)?<br>
  I'm terrible at Java and I need to get this done.</p>
  
  <p>My code:</p>
  
  <pre><code>public interface Inter
  {
      //Interface class 
      public void addContact();
      public void deleteContact();
      public void searchContact();
      public void readFile();
  }
  
  public class Contact
  {
      static String name;
      static String lastName;
      static String address;
      static String number;
  
      public Contact () { }
  }
  
  import java.io.BufferedReader;
  import java.io.BufferedWriter;
  import java.io.FileReader; // reads from dat file
  import java.io.FileWriter; // writes from dat file
  import java.io.IOException;
  import java.io.InputStreamReader; 
  
  public class Phonebook extends Contact implements Inter
  {
      public static void main(String[] args)
      {
      } // main
  
      @Override
      public void deleteContact() { }
  
      @Override
      public void searchContact() { }
  
      @Override
      public void addContact() 
      {
          String details = null;
          System.out.println("Enter new contact i.e name:number:lastname ");
          InputStreamReader converter = new InputStreamReader(System.in);
          BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(converter);
  
          try
          {
              details=in.readLine();
              String[] tokens =details.split(":"); // eg david :098:Needham
              name= tokens[0];
              lastName = tokens[1];
              address = tokens[2];
              number = tokens[3];
          }  catch (IOException e1) { }
  
          FileWriter fw = null; // writes contact info to the dat file
          try 
          {
              fw = new FileWriter("data.dat");
              fw.write(name);
              fw.write(lastName);
              fw.write(address);
              fw.write(number);
           } catch (IOException e) { }
           BufferedWriter bw = new BufferedWriter(fw);
      }
  
      public void readFile() // reads contacts from dat file
      {
          try
          {
              BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(new FileReader("data.dat"));
              String str;
              while ((str = in.readLine()) != null) 
              {}
           } catch(Exception ex) { }
       }
  }
  </code></pre>