Thread: saving / loading a file

I am looking for some help with saving a file / loading it back up again. I am going to avoid the whole serialization thing, I hope, but simply writing a text file, and reading it back in. This is for a tic tac toe type game and would need to save the state of the game.

I am not really sure how to make this work, I am hoping for some examples I can be referred to, or some ideas.

Here are my classes right now. I am able to open and close the fileSelector. I am not really sure how to take all of my variables and all of my arrays and write them out, then recognize them when they're coming back in as a load file to put the game the way it was. I am working on making sure all of these things can be pulled from a single Variables class to make it easy, but I am not sure how to write all these different types of items to a file in a meaningful way, and recognize them when I load it back in.

Any tips would be awesome.

package game.cc.gui;
import game.Variables;
import java.io.BufferedWriter;
import java.io.File;
import java.io.FileWriter;
import java.io.IOException;
import javax.swing.JFileChooser;
 
//saveGame class
 
 
/** items to save to file: 
*player names (String)
*scores (int)
*num pieces remaining (int)
*button array (JButton)
*buttonsUsed array (boolean)
*game size (int)
*window size (int)
*1 or 2 player game (int)
*computer difficulty if 1 player game (int)
*
*
*
*
*
*/
public class Save_Game {
GUI GUI;
Variables Variables;
//Create a file chooser
final JFileChooser fc = new JFileChooser();
 
 
//create new save file to be written to disk
public void save() throws IOException{
int returnVal = fc.showSaveDialog(fc);
   if (returnVal == JFileChooser.APPROVE_OPTION) {
             File file = fc.getSelectedFile();
 
FileWriter fstream = new FileWriter(file);
 
 
BufferedWriter out = new BufferedWriter(fstream); 
 
// write Jbutton array to file
for(int k = 0; k<Variables.getBoardSize()*Variables.getBoardSize(); k++){
String buttonStatus= GUI.buttons[k].getText();
  try {
	out.write(buttonStatus);
} catch (IOException e) {
	// TODO Auto-generated catch block
	e.printStackTrace();
}
  try {
	out.write(" ");
} catch (IOException e) {
	// TODO Auto-generated catch block
	e.printStackTrace();
}
} // end for 
 
// write buttonsUsed array to file
for(int i = 0; i<Variables.getBoardSize()*Variables.getBoardSize(); i++){
boolean buttonUsed = (GUI.buttonUsed[i]);
	if(buttonUsed){
  try {
	out.write(1);
} catch (IOException e) {
	// TODO Auto-generated catch block
	e.printStackTrace();
}
	} else
		try {
			out.write(0);
		} catch (IOException e) {
			// TODO Auto-generated catch block
			e.printStackTrace();
		}
	try {
		out.write(" ");
	} catch (IOException e) {
		// TODO Auto-generated catch block
		e.printStackTrace();
	}
} // end for 
 
  try {
	out.close();
} catch (IOException e) {
	// TODO Auto-generated catch block
	e.printStackTrace();
}
}
} // end method
} // end save game

package game.cc.gui;
 
import java.io.File;
 
import javax.swing.JFileChooser;
 
//load game class
 
 
/** items to load from file: 
*player names
*scores
*num pieces remaining
*state of buttons
*game size
*window size
*1 or 2 player game
*computer difficulty if 1 player game
*
*
*
*
*
*/
public class Load_Game{
 
//Create a file chooser
	public void load(){
JFileChooser fc = new JFileChooser();
 
int returnVal = fc.showOpenDialog(fc);
 
if (returnVal == JFileChooser.APPROVE_OPTION) {
             File file = fc.getSelectedFile();
 
} // end if
 
} // end load method
} // end load game