Best way to read structured binary files with Java

Question

I have to read a binary file in a legacy format with Java.

In a nutshell the file has a header consisting of several integers, bytes and fixed-length char arrays, f

Answer 1

To my knowledge, Java forces you to read a file as bytes rather than being able to block read. If you were serializing Java objects, it'd be a different story.

The other examples shown use the DataInputStream class with a File, but you can also use a shortcut: The RandomAccessFile class:

RandomAccessFile in = new RandomAccessFile("filename", "r");
int version = in.readInt();
byte type = in.readByte();
int beginOfData = in.readInt();
byte[] tempId;
in.read(tempId, 0, 16);
String id = new String(tempId);

Note that you could turn the responce objects into a class, if that would make it easier.

Answer 2

I used Javolution and javastruct, both handles the conversion between bytes and objects.

Javolution provides classes that represent C types. All you need to do is to write a class that describes the C structure. For example, from the C header file,

struct Date {
    unsigned short year;
    unsigned byte month;
    unsigned byte day;
};

should be translated into:

public static class Date extends Struct {
    public final Unsigned16 year = new Unsigned16();
    public final Unsigned8 month = new Unsigned8();
    public final Unsigned8 day   = new Unsigned8();
}

Then call setByteBuffer to initialize the object:

Date date = new Date();
date.setByteBuffer(ByteBuffer.wrap(bytes), 0);

javastruct uses annotation to define fields in a C structure.

@StructClass
public class Foo{

    @StructField(order = 0)
    public byte b;

    @StructField(order = 1)
    public int i;
}

To initialize an object:

Foo f2 = new Foo();
JavaStruct.unpack(f2, b);

Answer 3

I've written up a technique to do this sort of thing in java - similar to the old C-like idiom of reading bit-fields. Note it is just a start but could be expanded upon.

here

Answer 4

In the past I used DataInputStream to read data of arbitrary types in a specified order. This will not allow you to easily account for big-endian/little-endian issues.

As of 1.4 the java.nio.Buffer family might be the way to go, but it seems that the your code might actually be more complicated. These classes do have support for handling endian issues.

Answer 5

I may have misunderstood you, but it seems to me you're creating in-memory structures you hope will be a byte-per-byte accurate representation of what you want to read from hard-disk, then copy the whole stuff onto memory and manipulate thence?

If that's indeed the case, you're playing a very dangerous game. At least in C, the standard doesn't enforce things like padding or aligning of members of a struct. Not to mention things like big/small endianness or parity bits... So even if your code happens to run it's very non-portable and risky - you depend on the compiler's creator not changing its mind on future versions.

Better to create an automaton to both validate the structure being read (byte per byte) from HD is valid, and filling an in-memory structure if it's indeed OK. You may loose some milliseconds (not so much as it may seem for modern OSes do a lot of disk read caching) though you gain platform and compiler independence. Plus, your code will be easily ported to another language.

Post Edit: In a way I sympathize with you. In the good-ol' days of DOS/Win3.11, I once created a C program to read BMP files. And used exactly the same technique. Everything was nice until I tried to compile it for Windows - oops!! Int was now 32 bits long, rather than 16! When I tried to compile on Linux, discovered gcc had very different rules for bit fields allocation than Microsoft C (6.0!). I had to resort to macro tricks to make it portable...

Answer 6

You could use the DataInputStream class as follows:

DataInputStream in = new DataInputStream(new BufferedInputStream(
                         new FileInputStream("filename")));
int x = in.readInt();
double y = in.readDouble();

etc.

Once you get these values you can do with them as you please. Look up the java.io.DataInputStream class in the API for more info.