If you have a java.io.InputStream object, how should you process that object and produce a String?
Suppose I have an InputStream that contains text data, and I want to convert it to a String, so for example I can write that to a log file.
What is the easiest way to take the InputStream and convert it to a String?
public String convertStreamToString(InputStream is) {
// ???
}
A nice way to do this is using Apache commons IOUtils to copy the InputStream into a StringWriter... something like
StringWriter writer = new StringWriter();
IOUtils.copy(inputStream, writer, encoding);
String theString = writer.toString();
or even
// NB: does not close inputStream, you'll have to use try-with-resources for that
String theString = IOUtils.toString(inputStream, encoding);
Alternatively, you could use ByteArrayOutputStream if you don't want to mix your Streams and Writers
Apache Commons allows:
String myString = IOUtils.toString(myInputStream, "UTF-8");
Of course, you could choose other character encodings besides UTF-8.
Also see: (documentation)
Taking into account file one should first get a java.io.Reader instance. This can then be read and added to a StringBuilder (we don't need StringBuffer if we are not accessing it in multiple threads, and StringBuilder is faster). The trick here is that we work in blocks, and as such don't need other buffering streams. The block size is parameterized for run-time performance optimization.
public static String slurp(final InputStream is, final int bufferSize) {
final char[] buffer = new char[bufferSize];
final StringBuilder out = new StringBuilder();
try (Reader in = new InputStreamReader(is, "UTF-8")) {
for (;;) {
int rsz = in.read(buffer, 0, buffer.length);
if (rsz < 0)
break;
out.append(buffer, 0, rsz);
}
}
catch (UnsupportedEncodingException ex) {
/* ... */
}
catch (IOException ex) {
/* ... */
}
return out.toString();
}
Use:
import java.io.BufferedInputStream;
import java.io.ByteArrayOutputStream;
import java.io.InputStream;
import java.io.IOException;
public static String readInputStreamAsString(InputStream in)
throws IOException {
BufferedInputStream bis = new BufferedInputStream(in);
ByteArrayOutputStream buf = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
int result = bis.read();
while(result != -1) {
byte b = (byte)result;
buf.write(b);
result = bis.read();
}
return buf.toString();
}
Here's more-or-less sampath's answer, cleaned up a bit and represented as a function:
String streamToString(InputStream in) throws IOException {
StringBuilder out = new StringBuilder();
BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(in));
for(String line = br.readLine(); line != null; line = br.readLine())
out.append(line);
br.close();
return out.toString();
}
If you were feeling adventurous, you could mix Scala and Java and end up with this:
scala.io.Source.fromInputStream(is).mkString("")
Mixing Java and Scala code and libraries has it's benefits.
See full description here: Idiomatic way to convert an InputStream to a String in Scala
String inputStreamToString(InputStream inputStream, Charset charset) throws IOException {
try (
final StringWriter writer = new StringWriter();
final InputStreamReader reader = new InputStreamReader(inputStream, charset)
) {
reader.transferTo(writer);
return writer.toString();
}
}
JDK 7/8 answer that closes the stream and still throws an IOException:
StringBuilder build = new StringBuilder();
byte[] buf = new byte[1024];
int length;
try (InputStream is = getInputStream()) {
while ((length = is.read(buf)) != -1) {
build.append(new String(buf, 0, length));
}
}
Here is a very performant way to do this if you know your input stream's encoding is ISO-8859-1 or ASCII. It (1) avoids the unnecessary synchronization present in StringWriter's internal StringBuffer, (2) avoids the overhead of InputStreamReader, and (3) minimizes the number of times StringBuilder's internal char array must be copied.
public static String iso_8859_1(InputStream is) throws IOException {
StringBuilder chars = new StringBuilder(Math.max(is.available(), 4096));
byte[] buffer = new byte[4096];
int n;
while ((n = is.read(buffer)) != -1) {
for (int i = 0; i < n; i++) {
chars.append((char)(buffer[i] & 0xFF));
}
}
return chars.toString();
}
The same general strategy may be used for a stream encoded with UTF-8:
public static String utf8(InputStream is) throws IOException {
StringBuilder chars = new StringBuilder(Math.max(is.available(), 4096));
byte[] buffer = new byte[4096];
int n;
int state = 0;
while ((n = is.read(buffer)) != -1) {
for (int i = 0; i < n; i++) {
if ((state = nextStateUtf8(state, buffer[i])) >= 0) {
chars.appendCodePoint(state);
} else if (state == -1) { //error
state = 0;
chars.append('\uFFFD'); //replacement char
}
}
}
return chars.toString();
}
where the nextStateUtf8() function is defined as follows:
/**
* Returns the next UTF-8 state given the next byte of input and the current state.
* If the input byte is the last byte in a valid UTF-8 byte sequence,
* the returned state will be the corresponding unicode character (in the range of 0 through 0x10FFFF).
* Otherwise, a negative integer is returned. A state of -1 is returned whenever an
* invalid UTF-8 byte sequence is detected.
*/
static int nextStateUtf8(int currentState, byte nextByte) {
switch (currentState & 0xF0000000) {
case 0:
if ((nextByte & 0x80) == 0) { //0 trailing bytes (ASCII)
return nextByte;
} else if ((nextByte & 0xE0) == 0xC0) { //1 trailing byte
if (nextByte == (byte) 0xC0 || nextByte == (byte) 0xC1) { //0xCO & 0xC1 are overlong
return -1;
} else {
return nextByte & 0xC000001F;
}
} else if ((nextByte & 0xF0) == 0xE0) { //2 trailing bytes
if (nextByte == (byte) 0xE0) { //possibly overlong
return nextByte & 0xA000000F;
} else if (nextByte == (byte) 0xED) { //possibly surrogate
return nextByte & 0xB000000F;
} else {
return nextByte & 0x9000000F;
}
} else if ((nextByte & 0xFC) == 0xF0) { //3 trailing bytes
if (nextByte == (byte) 0xF0) { //possibly overlong
return nextByte & 0x80000007;
} else {
return nextByte & 0xE0000007;
}
} else if (nextByte == (byte) 0xF4) { //3 trailing bytes, possibly undefined
return nextByte & 0xD0000007;
} else {
return -1;
}
case 0xE0000000: //3rd-to-last continuation byte
return (nextByte & 0xC0) == 0x80 ? currentState << 6 | nextByte & 0x9000003F : -1;
case 0x80000000: //3rd-to-last continuation byte, check overlong
return (nextByte & 0xE0) == 0xA0 || (nextByte & 0xF0) == 0x90 ? currentState << 6 | nextByte & 0x9000003F : -1;
case 0xD0000000: //3rd-to-last continuation byte, check undefined
return (nextByte & 0xF0) == 0x80 ? currentState << 6 | nextByte & 0x9000003F : -1;
case 0x90000000: //2nd-to-last continuation byte
return (nextByte & 0xC0) == 0x80 ? currentState << 6 | nextByte & 0xC000003F : -1;
case 0xA0000000: //2nd-to-last continuation byte, check overlong
return (nextByte & 0xE0) == 0xA0 ? currentState << 6 | nextByte & 0xC000003F : -1;
case 0xB0000000: //2nd-to-last continuation byte, check surrogate
return (nextByte & 0xE0) == 0x80 ? currentState << 6 | nextByte & 0xC000003F : -1;
case 0xC0000000: //last continuation byte
return (nextByte & 0xC0) == 0x80 ? currentState << 6 | nextByte & 0x3F : -1;
default:
return -1;
}
}
If your input stream was encoded using either ASCII or ISO-8859-1 or UTF-8, but you're not sure which, we can use a similar method to the last, but with an additional encoding-detection component to auto-detect the encoding before returning the string.
public static String autoDetect(InputStream is) throws IOException {
StringBuilder chars = new StringBuilder(Math.max(is.available(), 4096));
byte[] buffer = new byte[4096];
int n;
int state = 0;
boolean ascii = true;
while ((n = is.read(buffer)) != -1) {
for (int i = 0; i < n; i++) {
if ((state = nextStateUtf8(state, buffer[i])) > 0x7F)
ascii = false;
chars.append((char)(buffer[i] & 0xFF));
}
}
if (ascii || state < 0) { //probably not UTF-8
return chars.toString();
}
//probably UTF-8
int pos = 0;
char[] charBuf = new char[2];
for (int i = 0, len = chars.length(); i < len; i++) {
if ((state = nextStateUtf8(state, (byte)chars.charAt(i))) >= 0) {
boolean hi = Character.toChars(state, charBuf, 0) == 2;
chars.setCharAt(pos++, charBuf[0]);
if (hi) {
chars.setCharAt(pos++, charBuf[1]);
}
}
}
return chars.substring(0, pos);
}
If your input stream has an encoding that is neither ISO-8859-1 nor ASCII nor UTF-8, then I defer to the other answers already present.
This Code is for New Java Learners:
private String textDataFromFile;
public String getFromFile(InputStream myInputStream) throws FileNotFoundException, IOException {
BufferedReader bufferReader = new BufferedReader (new InputStreamReader(myInputStream));
StringBuilder stringBuilder = new StringBuilder();
String eachStringLine;
while((eachStringLine=bufferReader.readLine()) != null){
stringBuilder.append(eachStringLine).append("\n");
}
textDataFromFile = stringBuilder.toString();
return textDataFromFile;
}
if You need to convert the string to a specific character set w/o external libraries then:
public String convertStreamToString(InputStream is) throws IOException {
try (ByteArrayOutputStream baos = new ByteArrayOutputStream();) {
is.transferTo(baos);
return baos.toString(StandardCharsets.UTF_8);
}
}
I have created this code, and it works. There are no required external plug-ins.
There is a converter String to Stream and Stream to String:
import java.io.ByteArrayInputStream;
import java.io.InputStream;
public class STRINGTOSTREAM {
public static void main(String[] args)
{
String text = "Hello Bhola..!\nMy Name Is Kishan ";
InputStream strm = new ByteArrayInputStream(text.getBytes()); // Convert String to Stream
String data = streamTostring(strm);
System.out.println(data);
}
static String streamTostring(InputStream stream)
{
String data = "";
try
{
StringBuilder stringbuld = new StringBuilder();
int i;
while ((i=stream.read())!=-1)
{
stringbuld.append((char)i);
}
data = stringbuld.toString();
}
catch(Exception e)
{
data = "No data Streamed.";
}
return data;
}
This solution to this question is not the simplest, but since NIO streams and channels have not been mentioned, here goes a version which uses NIO channels and a ByteBuffer to convert a stream into a string.
public static String streamToStringChannel(InputStream in, String encoding, int bufSize) throws IOException {
ReadableByteChannel channel = Channels.newChannel(in);
ByteBuffer byteBuffer = ByteBuffer.allocate(bufSize);
ByteArrayOutputStream bout = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
WritableByteChannel outChannel = Channels.newChannel(bout);
while (channel.read(byteBuffer) > 0 || byteBuffer.position() > 0) {
byteBuffer.flip(); //make buffer ready for write
outChannel.write(byteBuffer);
byteBuffer.compact(); //make buffer ready for reading
}
channel.close();
outChannel.close();
return bout.toString(encoding);
}
Here is an example how to use it:
try (InputStream in = new FileInputStream("/tmp/large_file.xml")) {
String x = streamToStringChannel(in, "UTF-8", 1);
System.out.println(x);
}
The performance of this method should be good for large files.
If you're using AWS SDK v2, call IoUtils.toUtf8String():
public String convertStreamToString(InputStream is) {
return IoUtils.toUtf8String(is);
}
I suggest the StringWriter class for that problem.
StringWriter wt= new StringWriter();
IOUtils.copy(inputStream, wt, encoding);
String st= wt.toString();
easiest way, one liner
public static void main(String... args) throws IOException {
System.out.println(new String(Files.readAllBytes(Paths.get("csv.txt"))));
}