Convert InputStream to byte array in Java

Question

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

Answer 1

You need to read each byte from your InputStream and write it to a ByteArrayOutputStream.

You can then retrieve the underlying byte array by calling toByteArray():

InputStream is = ...
ByteArrayOutputStream buffer = new ByteArrayOutputStream();

int nRead;
byte[] data = new byte[16384];

while ((nRead = is.read(data, 0, data.length)) != -1) {
  buffer.write(data, 0, nRead);
}

return buffer.toByteArray();

Answer 2

If you don't want to use the Apache commons-io library, this snippet is taken from the sun.misc.IOUtils class. It's nearly twice as fast as the common implementation using ByteBuffers:

public static byte[] readFully(InputStream is, int length, boolean readAll)
        throws IOException {
    byte[] output = {};
    if (length == -1) length = Integer.MAX_VALUE;
    int pos = 0;
    while (pos < length) {
        int bytesToRead;
        if (pos >= output.length) { // Only expand when there's no room
            bytesToRead = Math.min(length - pos, output.length + 1024);
            if (output.length < pos + bytesToRead) {
                output = Arrays.copyOf(output, pos + bytesToRead);
            }
        } else {
            bytesToRead = output.length - pos;
        }
        int cc = is.read(output, pos, bytesToRead);
        if (cc < 0) {
            if (readAll && length != Integer.MAX_VALUE) {
                throw new EOFException("Detect premature EOF");
            } else {
                if (output.length != pos) {
                    output = Arrays.copyOf(output, pos);
                }
                break;
            }
        }
        pos += cc;
    }
    return output;
}

Answer 3

See the InputStream.available() documentation:

It is particularly important to realize that you must not use this method to size a container and assume that you can read the entirety of the stream without needing to resize the container. Such callers should probably write everything they read to a ByteArrayOutputStream and convert that to a byte array. Alternatively, if you're reading from a file, File.length returns the current length of the file (though assuming the file's length can't change may be incorrect, reading a file is inherently racy).

Answer 4

You can try Cactoos:

byte[] array = new BytesOf(stream).bytes();

Answer 5

@Adamski: You can avoid buffer entirely.

Code copied from http://www.exampledepot.com/egs/java.io/File2ByteArray.html (Yes, it is very verbose, but needs half the size of memory as the other solution.)

// Returns the contents of the file in a byte array.
public static byte[] getBytesFromFile(File file) throws IOException {
    InputStream is = new FileInputStream(file);

    // Get the size of the file
    long length = file.length();

    // You cannot create an array using a long type.
    // It needs to be an int type.
    // Before converting to an int type, check
    // to ensure that file is not larger than Integer.MAX_VALUE.
    if (length > Integer.MAX_VALUE) {
        // File is too large
    }

    // Create the byte array to hold the data
    byte[] bytes = new byte[(int)length];

    // Read in the bytes
    int offset = 0;
    int numRead = 0;
    while (offset < bytes.length
           && (numRead=is.read(bytes, offset, bytes.length-offset)) >= 0) {
        offset += numRead;
    }

    // Ensure all the bytes have been read in
    if (offset < bytes.length) {
        throw new IOException("Could not completely read file "+file.getName());
    }

    // Close the input stream and return bytes
    is.close();
    return bytes;
}

Answer 6

Input Stream is ...
ByteArrayOutputStream bos = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
int next = in.read();
while (next > -1) {
    bos.write(next);
    next = in.read();
}
bos.flush();
byte[] result = bos.toByteArray();
bos.close();