How do I read / convert an InputStream into a String in Java?
How do I read / convert an InputStream into a String in Java?
Question
If you have a java.io.InputStream
object, how should you process that object and produce a String
?
Suppose I have an InputStream
that contains text data, and I want to convert it to a String
, so for example I can write that to a log file.
What is the easiest way to take the InputStream
and convert it to a String
?
public String convertStreamToString(InputStream is) {
// ???
}
Accepted Answer
A nice way to do this is using Apache commons IOUtils
to copy the InputStream
into a StringWriter
... something like
StringWriter writer = new StringWriter();
IOUtils.copy(inputStream, writer, encoding);
String theString = writer.toString();
or even
// NB: does not close inputStream, you'll have to use try-with-resources for that
String theString = IOUtils.toString(inputStream, encoding);
Alternatively, you could use ByteArrayOutputStream
if you don't want to mix your Streams and Writers
Popular Answer
Summarize other answers I found 11 main ways to do this (see below). And I wrote some performance tests (see results below):
Ways to convert an InputStream to a String:
Using
IOUtils.toString
(Apache Utils)String result = IOUtils.toString(inputStream, StandardCharsets.UTF_8);
Using
CharStreams
(Guava)String result = CharStreams.toString(new InputStreamReader( inputStream, Charsets.UTF_8));
Using
Scanner
(JDK)Scanner s = new Scanner(inputStream).useDelimiter("\\A"); String result = s.hasNext() ? s.next() : "";
Using Stream API (Java 8). Warning: This solution converts different line breaks (like
\r\n
) to\n
.String result = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(inputStream)) .lines().collect(Collectors.joining("\n"));
Using parallel Stream API (Java 8). Warning: This solution converts different line breaks (like
\r\n
) to\n
.String result = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(inputStream)).lines() .parallel().collect(Collectors.joining("\n"));
Using
InputStreamReader
andStringBuilder
(JDK)final int bufferSize = 1024; final char[] buffer = new char[bufferSize]; final StringBuilder out = new StringBuilder(); Reader in = new InputStreamReader(stream, StandardCharsets.UTF_8); int charsRead; while((charsRead = in.read(buffer, 0, buffer.length)) > 0) { out.append(buffer, 0, charsRead); } return out.toString();
Using
StringWriter
andIOUtils.copy
(Apache Commons)StringWriter writer = new StringWriter(); IOUtils.copy(inputStream, writer, "UTF-8"); return writer.toString();
Using
ByteArrayOutputStream
andinputStream.read
(JDK)ByteArrayOutputStream result = new ByteArrayOutputStream(); byte[] buffer = new byte[1024]; int length; while ((length = inputStream.read(buffer)) != -1) { result.write(buffer, 0, length); } // StandardCharsets.UTF_8.name() > JDK 7 return result.toString("UTF-8");
Using
BufferedReader
(JDK). Warning: This solution converts different line breaks (like\n\r
) toline.separator
system property (for example, in Windows to "\r\n").String newLine = System.getProperty("line.separator"); BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(inputStream)); StringBuilder result = new StringBuilder(); boolean flag = false; for (String line; (line = reader.readLine()) != null; ) { result.append(flag? newLine: "").append(line); flag = true; } return result.toString();
Using
BufferedInputStream
andByteArrayOutputStream
(JDK)BufferedInputStream bis = new BufferedInputStream(inputStream); ByteArrayOutputStream buf = new ByteArrayOutputStream(); int result = bis.read(); while(result != -1) { buf.write((byte) result); result = bis.read(); } // StandardCharsets.UTF_8.name() > JDK 7 return buf.toString("UTF-8");
Using
inputStream.read()
andStringBuilder
(JDK). Warning: This solution has problems with Unicode, for example with Russian text (works correctly only with non-Unicode text)int ch; StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(); while((ch = inputStream.read()) != -1) sb.append((char)ch); reset(); return sb.toString();
Warning:
Solutions 4, 5 and 9 convert different line breaks to one.
Solution 11 can't work correctly with Unicode text
Performance tests
Performance tests for small String
(length = 175), url in github (mode = Average Time, system = Linux, score 1,343 is the best):
Benchmark Mode Cnt Score Error Units
8. ByteArrayOutputStream and read (JDK) avgt 10 1,343 ± 0,028 us/op
6. InputStreamReader and StringBuilder (JDK) avgt 10 6,980 ± 0,404 us/op
10. BufferedInputStream, ByteArrayOutputStream avgt 10 7,437 ± 0,735 us/op
11. InputStream.read() and StringBuilder (JDK) avgt 10 8,977 ± 0,328 us/op
7. StringWriter and IOUtils.copy (Apache) avgt 10 10,613 ± 0,599 us/op
1. IOUtils.toString (Apache Utils) avgt 10 10,605 ± 0,527 us/op
3. Scanner (JDK) avgt 10 12,083 ± 0,293 us/op
2. CharStreams (guava) avgt 10 12,999 ± 0,514 us/op
4. Stream Api (Java 8) avgt 10 15,811 ± 0,605 us/op
9. BufferedReader (JDK) avgt 10 16,038 ± 0,711 us/op
5. parallel Stream Api (Java 8) avgt 10 21,544 ± 0,583 us/op
Performance tests for big String
(length = 50100), url in github (mode = Average Time, system = Linux, score 200,715 is the best):
Benchmark Mode Cnt Score Error Units
8. ByteArrayOutputStream and read (JDK) avgt 10 200,715 ± 18,103 us/op
1. IOUtils.toString (Apache Utils) avgt 10 300,019 ± 8,751 us/op
6. InputStreamReader and StringBuilder (JDK) avgt 10 347,616 ± 130,348 us/op
7. StringWriter and IOUtils.copy (Apache) avgt 10 352,791 ± 105,337 us/op
2. CharStreams (guava) avgt 10 420,137 ± 59,877 us/op
9. BufferedReader (JDK) avgt 10 632,028 ± 17,002 us/op
5. parallel Stream Api (Java 8) avgt 10 662,999 ± 46,199 us/op
4. Stream Api (Java 8) avgt 10 701,269 ± 82,296 us/op
10. BufferedInputStream, ByteArrayOutputStream avgt 10 740,837 ± 5,613 us/op
3. Scanner (JDK) avgt 10 751,417 ± 62,026 us/op
11. InputStream.read() and StringBuilder (JDK) avgt 10 2919,350 ± 1101,942 us/op
Graphs (performance tests depending on Input Stream length in Windows 7 system)
Performance test (Average Time) depending on Input Stream length in Windows 7 system:
length 182 546 1092 3276 9828 29484 58968
test8 0.38 0.938 1.868 4.448 13.412 36.459 72.708
test4 2.362 3.609 5.573 12.769 40.74 81.415 159.864
test5 3.881 5.075 6.904 14.123 50.258 129.937 166.162
test9 2.237 3.493 5.422 11.977 45.98 89.336 177.39
test6 1.261 2.12 4.38 10.698 31.821 86.106 186.636
test7 1.601 2.391 3.646 8.367 38.196 110.221 211.016
test1 1.529 2.381 3.527 8.411 40.551 105.16 212.573
test3 3.035 3.934 8.606 20.858 61.571 118.744 235.428
test2 3.136 6.238 10.508 33.48 43.532 118.044 239.481
test10 1.593 4.736 7.527 20.557 59.856 162.907 323.147
test11 3.913 11.506 23.26 68.644 207.591 600.444 1211.545
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Here's a way using only the standard Java library (note that the stream is not closed, your mileage may vary).
static String convertStreamToString(java.io.InputStream is) {
java.util.Scanner s = new java.util.Scanner(is).useDelimiter("\\A");
return s.hasNext() ? s.next() : "";
}
I learned this trick from "Stupid Scanner tricks" article. The reason it works is because Scanner iterates over tokens in the stream, and in this case we separate tokens using "beginning of the input boundary" (\A), thus giving us only one token for the entire contents of the stream.
Note, if you need to be specific about the input stream's encoding, you can provide the second argument to Scanner
constructor that indicates what character set to use (e.g. "UTF-8").
Hat tip goes also to Jacob, who once pointed me to the said article.
Apache Commons allows:
String myString = IOUtils.toString(myInputStream, "UTF-8");
Of course, you could choose other character encodings besides UTF-8.
Also see: (documentation)
Taking into account file one should first get a java.io.Reader
instance. This can then be read and added to a StringBuilder
(we don't need StringBuffer
if we are not accessing it in multiple threads, and StringBuilder
is faster). The trick here is that we work in blocks, and as such don't need other buffering streams. The block size is parameterized for run-time performance optimization.
public static String slurp(final InputStream is, final int bufferSize) {
final char[] buffer = new char[bufferSize];
final StringBuilder out = new StringBuilder();
try (Reader in = new InputStreamReader(is, "UTF-8")) {
for (;;) {
int rsz = in.read(buffer, 0, buffer.length);
if (rsz < 0)
break;
out.append(buffer, 0, rsz);
}
}
catch (UnsupportedEncodingException ex) {
/* ... */
}
catch (IOException ex) {
/* ... */
}
return out.toString();
}
Use:
InputStream in = /* Your InputStream */;
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(in));
String read;
while ((read=br.readLine()) != null) {
//System.out.println(read);
sb.append(read);
}
br.close();
return sb.toString();
If you are using Google-Collections/Guava you could do the following:
InputStream stream = ...
String content = CharStreams.toString(new InputStreamReader(stream, Charsets.UTF_8));
Closeables.closeQuietly(stream);
Note that the second parameter (i.e. Charsets.UTF_8) for the InputStreamReader
isn't necessary, but it is generally a good idea to specify the encoding if you know it (which you should!)