Tag: inputstream

1. Introduction

There are several ways of converting an InputStream to a String in java. Maybe you want to read the data and write it to a log file or do further processing. Here we look at several ways of accomplishing this task.

2. With InputStreamReader

Here is a simple implementation which uses the InputStreamReader to convert from bytes to characters. The code uses the platform default charset to decode the bytes. It reads input in chunks and appends the converted string to a StringBuilder.

private static String inputStreamToString(InputStream in)
    throws java.io.IOException
{
    BufferedReader br = null;
    try {
	InputStreamReader isr = new InputStreamReader(in);
	br = new BufferedReader(isr);
	char cbuf[] = new char[2048];
	int len;
	StringBuilder sbuf = new StringBuilder();
	while ((len = br.read(cbuf, 0, cbuf.length)) != -1)
	    sbuf.append(cbuf, 0, len);
	return sbuf.toString();
    } finally {
	if ( br != null ) br.close();
    }
}

3. Character Set Conversion

When converting input from a character set that is different from the platform default, you must specify the character set as follows:

private static String inputStreamToString(InputStream in,String charsetName)
    throws java.io.IOException
{
    BufferedReader br = null;
    try {
	InputStreamReader isr = new InputStreamReader(in, charsetName);
	br = new BufferedReader(isr);
	char cbuf[] = new char[2048];
	int len;
	StringBuilder sbuf = new StringBuilder();
	while ((len = br.read(cbuf, 0, cbuf.length)) != -1)
	    sbuf.append(cbuf, 0, len);
	return sbuf.toString();
    } finally {
	if ( br != null ) br.close();
    }
}

4. Using try-with-resources

When using a JDK 1.7 or later, you can use the try-with-resources block to eliminate some boilerplate code for exception handling:

private static String inputStreamToString(InputStream in,String charsetName)
    throws java.io.IOException
{
    try (BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(in, charsetName))) {
	char cbuf[] = new char[2048];
	int len;
	StringBuilder sbuf = new StringBuilder();
	while ((len = br.read(cbuf, 0, cbuf.length)) != -1)
		sbuf.append(cbuf, 0, len);
	return sbuf.toString();
    }
}

The try-with-resources block is used to automatically close resources when the block exits (whether normally or due to an exception).

try (BufferedReader br =
      new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(in, charsetName))) {
    // use the resource br here
    }

5. With ByteArrayOutputStream

Another option for converting InputStream to String uses the ByteArrayOutputStream. Here you can accumulate the bytes read from the InputStream and perform the final conversion to the desired character set.

private static String inputStreamToString(InputStream in,String charsetName)
    throws java.io.IOException
{
    try (ByteArrayOutputStream out = new ByteArrayOutputStream()) {
	byte buf[] = new byte[2048];
	int len;
	while ((len = in.read(buf)) != -1) out.write(buf, 0, len);
	return out.toString(charsetName);
    }
}

6. Using Apache Commons IO

Converting an InputStream to String can be achieved in a single line by using Apache Commons IO:

private static String inputStreamToString(InputStream in,String charsetName)
    throws java.io.IOException
{
    return IOUtils.toString(in, charsetName);
}

If you are using Maven as your build system, you need the following dependency:

<dependencies>
  <dependency>
    <groupId>commons-io</groupId>
    <artifactId>commons-io</artifactId>
    <version>2.4</version>
  </dependency>
</dependencies>

Conclusion

In this article, you learned several ways of converting an InputStream to String. Depending on your circumstances, you can pick the most appropriate one for your needs.