How to convert a byte array to a hex string in Java?

Question

I have a byte array filled with hex numbers and printing it the easy way is pretty pointless because there are many unprintable elements. What I need is the exact hexcode in

Answer 1

A small variant of the solution proposed by @maybewecouldstealavan, which lets you visually bundle N bytes together in the output hex string:

 final static char[] HEX_ARRAY = "0123456789ABCDEF".toCharArray();
 final static char BUNDLE_SEP = ' ';

public static String bytesToHexString(byte[] bytes, int bundleSize /*[bytes]*/]) {
        char[] hexChars = new char[(bytes.length * 2) + (bytes.length / bundleSize)];
        for (int j = 0, k = 1; j < bytes.length; j++, k++) {
                int v = bytes[j] & 0xFF;
                int start = (j * 2) + j/bundleSize;

                hexChars[start] = HEX_ARRAY[v >>> 4];
                hexChars[start + 1] = HEX_ARRAY[v & 0x0F];

                if ((k % bundleSize) == 0) {
                        hexChars[start + 2] = BUNDLE_SEP;
                }   
        }   
        return new String(hexChars).trim();    
}

That is:

bytesToHexString("..DOOM..".toCharArray().getBytes(), 2);
2E2E 444F 4F4D 2E2E

bytesToHexString("..DOOM..".toCharArray().getBytes(), 4);
2E2E444F 4F4D2E2E

Answer 2

From the discussion here, and especially this answer, this is the function I currently use:

private static final char[] HEX_ARRAY = "0123456789ABCDEF".toCharArray();
public static String bytesToHex(byte[] bytes) {
    char[] hexChars = new char[bytes.length * 2];
    for (int j = 0; j < bytes.length; j++) {
        int v = bytes[j] & 0xFF;
        hexChars[j * 2] = HEX_ARRAY[v >>> 4];
        hexChars[j * 2 + 1] = HEX_ARRAY[v & 0x0F];
    }
    return new String(hexChars);
}

My own tiny benchmarks (a million bytes a thousand times, 256 bytes 10 million times) showed it to be much faster than any other alternative, about half the time on long arrays. Compared to the answer I took it from, switching to bitwise ops --- as suggested in the discussion --- cut about 20% off of the time for long arrays. (Edit: When I say it's faster than the alternatives, I mean the alternative code offered in the discussions. Performance is equivalent to Commons Codec, which uses very similar code.)

2k20 version, with respect to Java 9 compact strings:

private static final byte[] HEX_ARRAY = "0123456789ABCDEF".getBytes(StandardCharsets.US_ASCII);
public static String bytesToHex(byte[] bytes) {
    byte[] hexChars = new byte[bytes.length * 2];
    for (int j = 0; j < bytes.length; j++) {
        int v = bytes[j] & 0xFF;
        hexChars[j * 2] = HEX_ARRAY[v >>> 4];
        hexChars[j * 2 + 1] = HEX_ARRAY[v & 0x0F];
    }
    return new String(hexChars, StandardCharsets.UTF_8);
}

Answer 3

// Shifting bytes is more efficient // You can use this one too

public static String getHexString (String s) 
{
    byte[] buf = s.getBytes();

    StringBuffer sb = new StringBuffer();

    for (byte b:buf)
    {
        sb.append(String.format("%x", b));
    }


        return sb.toString();
}

Answer 4

I found three different ways here: http://www.rgagnon.com/javadetails/java-0596.html

The most elegant one, as he also notes, I think is this one:

static final String HEXES = "0123456789ABCDEF";
public static String getHex( byte [] raw ) {
    if ( raw == null ) {
        return null;
    }
    final StringBuilder hex = new StringBuilder( 2 * raw.length );
    for ( final byte b : raw ) {
        hex.append(HEXES.charAt((b & 0xF0) >> 4))
            .append(HEXES.charAt((b & 0x0F)));
    }
    return hex.toString();
}

Answer 5

Converts bytes data to hex characters

@param bytes byte array to be converted to hex string
@return byte String in hex format

private static String bytesToHex(byte[] bytes) {
    char[] hexChars = new char[bytes.length * 2];
    int v;
    for (int j = 0; j < bytes.length; j++) {
        v = bytes[j] & 0xFF;
        hexChars[j * 2] = HEX_ARRAY[v >>> 4];
        hexChars[j * 2 + 1] = HEX_ARRAY[v & 0x0F];
    }
    return new String(hexChars);
}

Answer 6

If you're using the Spring Security framework, you can use:

import org.springframework.security.crypto.codec.Hex

final String testString = "Test String";
final byte[] byteArray = testString.getBytes();
System.out.println(Hex.encode(byteArray));