Convert a string representation of a hex dump to a byte array using Java?

Update (2021) - Java 17 now includes java.util.HexFormat (only took 25 years):

HexFormat.of().parseHex(s)

Here's a solution that I think is better than any posted so far:

/* s must be an even-length string. */
public static byte[] hexStringToByteArray(String s) {
    int len = s.length();
    byte[] data = new byte[len / 2];
    for (int i = 0; i < len; i += 2) {
        data[i / 2] = (byte) ((Character.digit(s.charAt(i), 16) << 4)
                             + Character.digit(s.charAt(i+1), 16));
    }
    return data;
}

Reasons why it is an improvement:

• Safe with leading zeros (unlike BigInteger) and with negative byte values (unlike Byte.parseByte)

• Doesn't convert the String into a char[], or create StringBuilder and String objects for every single byte.

• No library dependencies that may not be available

Feel free to add argument checking via assert or exceptions if the argument is not known to be safe.

The Hex class in commons-codec should do that for you.

http://commons.apache.org/codec/

import org.apache.commons.codec.binary.Hex;
...
byte[] decoded = Hex.decodeHex("00A0BF");
// 0x00 0xA0 0xBF

Actually, I think the BigInteger is solution is very nice:

new BigInteger("00A0BF", 16).toByteArray();

Edit: Not safe for leading zeros, as noted by the poster.

The HexBinaryAdapter provides the ability to marshal and unmarshal between String and byte[].

import javax.xml.bind.annotation.adapters.HexBinaryAdapter;

public byte[] hexToBytes(String hexString) {
     HexBinaryAdapter adapter = new HexBinaryAdapter();
     byte[] bytes = adapter.unmarshal(hexString);
     return bytes;
}

That's just an example I typed in...I actually just use it as is and don't need to make a separate method for using it.

Here is a method that actually works (based on several previous semi-correct answers):

private static byte[] fromHexString(final String encoded) {
    if ((encoded.length() % 2) != 0)
        throw new IllegalArgumentException("Input string must contain an even number of characters");

    final byte result[] = new byte[encoded.length()/2];
    final char enc[] = encoded.toCharArray();
    for (int i = 0; i < enc.length; i += 2) {
        StringBuilder curr = new StringBuilder(2);
        curr.append(enc[i]).append(enc[i + 1]);
        result[i/2] = (byte) Integer.parseInt(curr.toString(), 16);
    }
    return result;
}

The only possible issue that I can see is if the input string is extremely long; calling toCharArray() makes a copy of the string's internal array.

EDIT: Oh, and by the way, bytes are signed in Java, so your input string converts to [0, -96, -65] instead of [0, 160, 191]. But you probably knew that already.

EDIT: as pointed out by @mmyers, this method doesn't work on input that contains substrings corresponding to bytes with the high bit set ("80" - "FF"). The explanation is at Bug ID: 6259307 Byte.parseByte not working as advertised in the SDK Documentation.

public static final byte[] fromHexString(final String s) {
    byte[] arr = new byte[s.length()/2];
    for ( int start = 0; start < s.length(); start += 2 )
    {
        String thisByte = s.substring(start, start+2);
        arr[start/2] = Byte.parseByte(thisByte, 16);
    }
    return arr;
}

For what it's worth, here's another version which supports odd length strings, without resorting to string concatenation.

public static byte[] hexStringToByteArray(String input) {
    int len = input.length();

    if (len == 0) {
        return new byte[] {};
    }

    byte[] data;
    int startIdx;
    if (len % 2 != 0) {
        data = new byte[(len / 2) + 1];
        data[0] = (byte) Character.digit(input.charAt(0), 16);
        startIdx = 1;
    } else {
        data = new byte[len / 2];
        startIdx = 0;
    }

    for (int i = startIdx; i < len; i += 2) {
        data[(i + 1) / 2] = (byte) ((Character.digit(input.charAt(i), 16) << 4)
                + Character.digit(input.charAt(i+1), 16));
    }
    return data;
}

I've always used a method like

public static final byte[] fromHexString(final String s) {
    String[] v = s.split(" ");
    byte[] arr = new byte[v.length];
    int i = 0;
    for(String val: v) {
        arr[i++] =  Integer.decode("0x" + val).byteValue();

    }
    return arr;
}

this method splits on space delimited hex values but it wouldn't be hard to make it split the string on any other criteria such as into groupings of two characters.

I found Kernel Panic to have the solution most useful to me, but ran into problems if the hex string was an odd number. solved it this way:

boolean isOdd(int value)
{
    return (value & 0x01) !=0;
}

private int hexToByte(byte[] out, int value)
{
    String hexVal = "0123456789ABCDEF"; 
    String hexValL = "0123456789abcdef";
    String st = Integer.toHexString(value);
    int len = st.length();
    if (isOdd(len))
        {
        len+=1; // need length to be an even number.
        st = ("0" + st);  // make it an even number of chars
        }
    out[0]=(byte)(len/2);
    for (int i =0;i<len;i+=2)
    {
        int hh = hexVal.indexOf(st.charAt(i));
            if (hh == -1)  hh = hexValL.indexOf(st.charAt(i));
        int lh = hexVal.indexOf(st.charAt(i+1));
            if (lh == -1)  lh = hexValL.indexOf(st.charAt(i+1));
        out[(i/2)+1] = (byte)((hh << 4)|lh);
    }
    return (len/2)+1;
}

I am adding a number of hex numbers to an array, so i pass the reference to the array I am using, and the int I need converted and returning the relative position of the next hex number. So the final byte array has [0] number of hex pairs, [1...] hex pairs, then the number of pairs...

public static byte[] hex2ba(String sHex) throws Hex2baException {
    if (1==sHex.length()%2) {
        throw(new Hex2baException("Hex string need even number of chars"));
    }

    byte[] ba = new byte[sHex.length()/2];
    for (int i=0;i<sHex.length()/2;i++) {
        ba[i] = (Integer.decode(
                "0x"+sHex.substring(i*2, (i+1)*2))).byteValue();
    }
    return ba;
}

Late to the party, but I have amalgamated the answer above by DaveL into a class with the reverse action - just in case it helps.

public final class HexString {
    private static final char[] digits = "0123456789ABCDEF".toCharArray();

    private HexString() {}

    public static final String fromBytes(final byte[] bytes) {
        final StringBuilder buf = new StringBuilder();
        for (int i = 0; i < bytes.length; i++) {
            buf.append(HexString.digits[(bytes[i] >> 4) & 0x0f]);
            buf.append(HexString.digits[bytes[i] & 0x0f]);
        }
        return buf.toString();
    }

    public static final byte[] toByteArray(final String hexString) {
        if ((hexString.length() % 2) != 0) {
            throw new IllegalArgumentException("Input string must contain an even number of characters");
        }
        final int len = hexString.length();
        final byte[] data = new byte[len / 2];
        for (int i = 0; i < len; i += 2) {
            data[i / 2] = (byte) ((Character.digit(hexString.charAt(i), 16) << 4)
                    + Character.digit(hexString.charAt(i + 1), 16));
        }
        return data;
    }
}

And JUnit test class:

public class TestHexString {

    @Test
    public void test() {
        String[] tests = {"0FA1056D73", "", "00", "0123456789ABCDEF", "FFFFFFFF"};

        for (int i = 0; i < tests.length; i++) {
            String in = tests[i];
            byte[] bytes = HexString.toByteArray(in);
            String out = HexString.fromBytes(bytes);
            System.out.println(in); //DEBUG
            System.out.println(out); //DEBUG
            Assert.assertEquals(in, out);

        }

    }

}

I know this is a very old thread, but still like to add my penny worth.

If I really need to code up a simple hex string to binary converter, I'd like to do it as follows.

public static byte[] hexToBinary(String s){

  /*
   * skipped any input validation code
   */

  byte[] data = new byte[s.length()/2];

  for( int i=0, j=0; 
       i<s.length() && j<data.length; 
       i+=2, j++)
  {
     data[j] = (byte)Integer.parseInt(s.substring(i, i+2), 16);
  }

  return data;
}

If your needs are more than just the occasional conversion then you can use HexUtils.

Example:

byte[] byteArray = Hex.hexStrToBytes("00A0BF");

This is the most simple case. Your input may contain delimiters (think MAC addresses, certificate thumbprints, etc), your input may be streaming, etc. In such cases it gets easier to justify to pull in an external library like HexUtils, however small.

With JDK 17 the HexFormat class will fulfill most needs and the need for something like HexUtils is greatly diminished. However, HexUtils can still be used for things like converting very large amounts to/from hex (streaming) or pretty printing hex (think wire dumps) which the JDK HexFormat class cannot do.

(full disclosure: I'm the author of HexUtils)

I think will do it for you. I cobbled it together from a similar function that returned the data as a string:

private static byte[] decode(String encoded) {
    byte result[] = new byte[encoded/2];
    char enc[] = encoded.toUpperCase().toCharArray();
    StringBuffer curr;
    for (int i = 0; i < enc.length; i += 2) {
        curr = new StringBuffer("");
        curr.append(String.valueOf(enc[i]));
        curr.append(String.valueOf(enc[i + 1]));
        result[i] = (byte) Integer.parseInt(curr.toString(), 16);
    }
    return result;
}