How to Convert String to InputStream in Java

Rupam Yadav Feb 02, 2024 Java Java String Java InputStream
  1. Use ByteArrayInputStream() to Convert a String to InputStream in Java
  2. Use StringReader and ReaderInputStream to Convert a String to an InputStream in Java
  3. Use org.apache.commons.io.IOUtils to Convert a String to an InputStream
How to Convert String to InputStream in Java

We will talk about how to convert a string to an InputStream in Java using several methods. A string is a set of characters, while an InputStream is a set of bytes. Let’s see how we can convert string to InputStream in Java.

Use ByteArrayInputStream() to Convert a String to InputStream in Java

Java’s Input/Output package has the class ByteArrayInputStream that reads the byte arrays as InputStream. First, we use getBytes() to get the bytes from exampleString with the charset UTF_8, and then pass it to ByteArrayInputStream.

To check if we succeed in our goal, we can read the inputStream using read(), and convert every byte to a char. This will return our original string.

import java.io.ByteArrayInputStream;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.InputStream;
import java.nio.charset.StandardCharsets;

public class Main {
  public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
    String exampleString = "This is a sample string";

    InputStream inputStream =
        new ByteArrayInputStream(exampleString.getBytes(StandardCharsets.UTF_8));

    // To check if we can read the string back from the inputstream
    int i;
    while ((i = inputStream.read()) != -1) {
      char getSingleChar = (char) i;
      System.out.print(getSingleChar);
    }
  }
}

Output:

This is a sample string

Use StringReader and ReaderInputStream to Convert a String to an InputStream in Java

The second technique to convert the string to InputStream uses two methods, StringReader and ReaderInputStream. The former is used to read the string and wrap it into a reader while the latter takes two arguments, a reader and the charsets. At last, we get the InputStream.

import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.InputStream;
import java.io.StringReader;
import java.nio.charset.StandardCharsets;
import org.apache.commons.io.input.ReaderInputStream;

public class Main {
  public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
    String exampleString = "This is a sample string";

    StringReader stringReader = new StringReader(exampleString);

    InputStream inputStream = new ReaderInputStream(stringReader, StandardCharsets.UTF_8);

    // To check if we can read the string back from the inputstream
    int i;
    while ((i = inputStream.read()) != -1) {
      char getSingleChar = (char) i;
      System.out.print(getSingleChar);
    }
  }
}

Output:

This is a sample string

Use org.apache.commons.io.IOUtils to Convert a String to an InputStream

We can also use the Apache Commons library to make our task easier. The IOUtls class of this Apache Commons library has a toInputStream() method that takes a string and the charset to use. This method is easiest of all as we only have to call a single method to convert the Java string to InputStream.

import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.InputStream;
import java.nio.charset.StandardCharsets;
import org.apache.commons.io.IOUtils;

public class Main {
  public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
    String exampleString = "This is a sample string";

    InputStream is = IOUtils.toInputStream(exampleString, StandardCharsets.UTF_8);

    // To check if we can read the string back from the inputstream
    int i;
    while ((i = is.read()) != -1) {
      char getSingleChar = (char) i;
      System.out.print(getSingleChar);
    }
  }
}

Output:

This is a sample string
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Author: Rupam Yadav
Rupam Yadav avatar Rupam Yadav avatar

Rupam Saini is an android developer, who also works sometimes as a web developer., He likes to read books and write about various things.

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