Different Ways to Convert InputStream to String java with examples

Different Ways to Convert InputStream to String java with examples

In this post, We are going to learn how to convert InputStream to String in java with examples.

In Java, if we want to read and write files, We have to use Input and output streams. These I/O Streams are files or devices or any other source.

for example, InputStream is used to read the data from the file system OutputStream is used to write the data to the file system

In this example, We are going to learn How to Convert InputStream to String using java io classes, commons-io and guava library, and java8 stream APIs

Apache commons Io library

Apache Commons IO library provides utility classes for Input and Output operations.

Add the commons-io library into pom.xml

    <dependency>
      <groupId>commons-io</groupId>
      <artifactId>commons-io</artifactId>
      <version>2.6</version>
    </dependency>

Here is an example

  • Create a InputStream using FileInputStream to read the file
  • Copy the Stream content into Writer using IOUtils.toString method
import java.io.FileInputStream;
import java.io.InputStream;
import org.apache.commons.io.IOUtils.IOUtils;
public class FileTest {
    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception{
        InputStream inputStream = new FileInputStream("c:/file.txt");
        String myString = IOUtils.toString(inputStream, "UTF-8");


    }
}

Using the java.io.StringWriter class

  • Create a InputStream using FileInputStream to read the file
  • Create a StringWriter to copy string content from file
  • Copy the Stream content into Writer using IOUtils.copy method
  • Convert to String using StringWriter.toString() method
import java.io.FileInputStream;
import java.io.InputStream;
import java.io.StringWriter;

import org.apache.commons.io.IOUtils.IOUtils;
public class FileTest {
    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception{
        InputStream inputStream = new FileInputStream("c:/file.txt");
        StringWriter stringWriter = new StringWriter();
        IOUtils.copy(inputStream, stringWriter, "UTF-8");
        System.out.println(stringWriter.toString();)



    }
}

Java8 with BufferedReader

Java8 provides Stream API to read and write files with InputStream and BufferedReader.

  • Created an Input Stream for reading file
  • Created A BufferedReader using InputStreamReader class
  • Call java8 stream API lines method that lazily returns a stream
  • Finally, Call collect with a line break to convert the input String
import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.FileInputStream;
import java.io.InputStream;
import java.io.InputStreamReader;
import java.util.stream.Collectors;

public class FileTest {
    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        InputStream inputStream = new FileInputStream("c:/file.txt");
        String output = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(inputStream))
                .lines().collect(Collectors.joining("\n"));


    }
}

The same above example can be rewritten to read in parallel steam using the parallel() method

import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.FileInputStream;
import java.io.InputStream;
import java.io.InputStreamReader;
import java.util.stream.Collectors;

public class FileTest {
    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        InputStream inputStream = new FileInputStream("c:/file.txt");
        String result = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(inputStream))
                .lines().parallel().collect(Collectors.joining("\n"));


    }
}

guava CharStreams

guava is a google library to read and write io operations on files.

Add the below dependency to pom.xml

    <dependency>
      <groupId>com.google.guava</groupId>
      <artifactId>guava</artifactId>
      <version>30.1.1-jre</version>
    </dependency>

CharStreams.toString converts input stream into string with specified Charsets.UTF_8

import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.FileInputStream;
import java.io.InputStream;
import java.io.InputStreamReader;
import com.google.common.io.CharStreams;
import com.google.common.base.Charsets;
public class FileTest {
    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        InputStream inputStream = new FileInputStream("c:/file.txt");
        String output = CharStreams.toString(new InputStreamReader(
                inputStream, Charsets.UTF_8));



    }
}

Conclusion

To summarize, We have learned different ways of reading input files and converting the stream to String in java8,commons-io, and guava library.