Reliable way to convert a file to a byte[]

user_41543 0
Viewed 194627

I found the following code on the web:

private byte [] StreamFile(string filename)
{
   FileStream fs = new FileStream(filename, FileMode.Open,FileAccess.Read);

   // Create a byte array of file stream length
   byte[] ImageData = new byte[fs.Length];

   //Read block of bytes from stream into the byte array
   fs.Read(ImageData,0,System.Convert.ToInt32(fs.Length));

   //Close the File Stream
   fs.Close();
   return ImageData; //return the byte data
}

Is it reliable enough to use to convert a file to byte[] in c#, or is there a better way to do this?

c#
7 Answers

All these answers with .ReadAllBytes(). Another, similar (I won't say duplicate, since they were trying to refactor their code) question was asked on SO here: Best way to read a large file into a byte array in C#?

A comment was made on one of the posts regarding .ReadAllBytes():

File.ReadAllBytes throws OutOfMemoryException with big files (tested with 630 MB file 
and it failed) – juanjo.arana Mar 13 '13 at 1:31

A better approach, to me, would be something like this, with BinaryReader:

public static byte[] FileToByteArray(string fileName)
{
    byte[] fileData = null;

    using (FileStream fs = File.OpenRead(fileName)) 
    { 
        var binaryReader = new BinaryReader(fs); 
        fileData = binaryReader.ReadBytes((int)fs.Length); 
    }
    return fileData;
}

But that's just me...

Of course, this all assumes you have the memory to handle the byte[] once it is read in, and I didn't put in the File.Exists check to ensure the file is there before proceeding, as you'd do that before calling this code.

user_11815350 
string filePath= @"D:\MiUnidad\testFile.pdf";
byte[] bytes = await System.IO.File.ReadAllBytesAsync(filePath);
user_81854930
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