Convert InputStream to byte array in Java

Question

How do I read an entire InputStream into a byte array?

Answer 1

I tried to edit @numan's answer with a fix for writing garbage data but edit was rejected. While this short piece of code is nothing brilliant I can't see any other better answer. Here's what makes most sense to me:

ByteArrayOutputStream out = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
byte[] buffer = new byte[1024]; // you can configure the buffer size
int length;

while ((length = in.read(buffer)) != -1) out.write(buffer, 0, length); //copy streams
in.close(); // call this in a finally block

byte[] result = out.toByteArray();

btw ByteArrayOutputStream need not be closed. try/finally constructs omitted for readability