Develop Reference

What can be replaced by fileInputStream.available()?

When learning Java IO, I found that fileInputStream has an availabl() method, which can be equal to the file size when reading local files. So if you can directly know the size of the file, then in the case of the need to read the entire file, it is necessary to use BufferedInputStream to decorate it?
like this:
FileInputStream fileInputStream=new FileInputStream("F:\\test.txt");
byte[] data=new byte[fileInputStream.available()];
if (fileInputStream.read(data)!=-1) {
System.out.println(new String(data));
}
or
BufferedReader bufferedReader=new BufferedReader(new
FileReader("F:\\test.txt"));
StringBuilder stringBuilder=new StringBuilder();
for (String line;(line=bufferedReader.readLine())!=null;){
stringBuilder.append(line);
}
System.out.println(stringBuilder.toString());
or
BufferedInputStream bufferedInputStream=new BufferedInputStream(new FileInputStream("F:\\test.txt"));
byte[] data=new byte[bufferedInputStream.available()];
if (bufferedInputStream.read(data)!=-1) {
System.out.println(new String(data));
}
What are the pros and cons of these methods? Which one is better?
thx.

You are wrong about the meaning of available(). It returns the possible number of bytes you can read without blocking. From documentation:
Note that while some implementations of InputStream will return the total number of bytes in the stream, many will not. It is never correct to use the return value of this method to allocate a buffer intended to hold all data in this stream.
So, if you want convert stream to byte array you should use corresponding libraries, such as IOUtils:
byte[] out = IOUtils.toByteArray(stream);

Byte [] used as a BufferInputStream ok but

Ok I know a buffer is actually an array of byte, however I have never seen the following declaration (taken from here)
URLConnection con = new URL("http://maps...").openConnection();
InputStream is = con.getInputStream();
byte bytes[] = new byte[con.getContentLength()];
is.read(bytes);
Is it the right way to avoid using a BufferInputStream object? Here we have an unbuffered stream reading from a byte []? should not be the other way around?
thanks in advance.

No, it is not the right way. Method read() reads up to N bytes where N is the length of your array. It can read less bytes (even 0) if no more byte are available. Number of bytes that have been read is returned by method read(). When end of stream is reached the method returns -1.
Therefore the right way is to read bytes in loop:
byte[] buf = new buf[MAX];
int n = 0;
while ((n = stream.read(buf)) >= 0) {
// deal with n first bytes from buf
}

or use Apache commons-io
InputStream is;
byte[] bytes = IOUtils.toByteArray(is);

Bring out inputstream from inputstream

i need to bring out inputstream from inputstream , for example inputstream A is 1024 byte and i need to bring out inputstream B from A of Hundred and fiftieth byte to end , from certain offset to certain end . i search in google and stackoverflow ...Is there any solution available in java ??

You can use the method "skip" to skip the first 150 bytes.
Here is an example:
byte[] buf = {1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9};
InputStream is1 = new ByteArrayInputStream(buf);
long skip = is1.skip(5);
System.out.println(is1.read());

If you know that you have a FileInputStream, you can use FileChannel.position() to set where in the file that stream will read from.
FileInputStream in = new FileInputStream("whatever");
FileChannel channel = in.getChannel();
channel.position(10);
This will not work with other types of streams.

Sending big file using FileInputStream/ObjectOutputStream

I need help on my homework, any help will be much appreciated. I can send small files without a problem. But when i try to send let’s say a 1GB file byte array sends OutOfMemoryError so i need a better solution to send file from server to client. How can i improve this code and send big files, please help me.
Server Code:
FileInputStream fis = new FileInputStream(file);
byte[] fileByte = new byte[fis.available()]; //This causes the problem.
bytesRead = fis.read(fileByte);
oos = new ObjectOutputStream(sock.getOutputStream());
oos.writeObject(fileByte);
Client Code:
ois = new ObjectInputStream(sock.getInputStream());
byte[] file = (byte[]) ois.readObject();
fos = new FileOutputStream(file);
fos.write(file);

Don't read the whole file into memory, use a small buffer and write while you are reading the file:
BufferedOutputStream bos = new BufferedOutputStream(sock.getOutputStream())
File file = new File("asd");
FileInputStream fis = new FileInputStream(file);
BufferedInputStream bis = new BufferedInputStream(fis);
byte[] buffer = new byte[1024*1024*10];
int n = -1;
while((n = bis.read(buffer))!=-1) {
bos.write(buffer,0,n):
}
Use Buffered* to optimize the writing and reading from Streams

Just split the array to smaller chunks so that you don't need to allocate any big array.
For example you could split the array into 16Kb chunks, eg new byte[16384] and send them one by one. On the receiving side you would have to wait until a chunk can be fully read and then store them somewhere and start with next chunk.
But if you are not able to allocate a whole array of the size you need on server side you won't be able to store all the data that you are going to receive anyway.
You could also compress the data before sending it to save bandwidth (and time), take a look at ZipOutputStream and ZipInputStream.

Here's how I solved it:
Client Code:
bis=new BufferedInputStream(sock.getInputStream());
fos = new FileOutputStream(file);
int n;
byte[] buffer = new byte[8192];
while ((n = bis.read(buffer)) > 0){
fos.write(buffer, 0, n);}
Server Code:
bos= new BufferedOutputStream(sock.getOutputStream());
FileInputStream fis = new FileInputStream(file);
BufferedInputStream bis = new BufferedInputStream(fis);
int n=-1;
byte[] buffer = new byte[8192];
while((n = bis.read(buffer))>-1)
bos.write(buffer,0,n);

Depending on whether or not you have to write the code yourself, there are existing libraries which solve this problem, e.g. rmiio. If you are not using RMI, just plain java serialization, you can use the DirectRemoteInputStream, which is kind of like a Serializable InputStream. (this library also has support for things like auto-magically compressing the data).
Actually, if you are only sending file data, you would be better off ditching the Object streams and use DataInput/DataOutput streams. first write an integer indicating the file length, then copy the bytes directly to the stream. on the receiving side, read the integer file length, then read exactly that many bytes.
when you copy the data between streams, use a small, fixed size byte[] to move chunks of data between the input and output streams in a loop. there are numerous examples of how to do this correctly available online (e.g. #ErikFWinter's answer).

Reading a binary input stream into a single byte array in Java

The documentation says that one should not use available() method to determine the size of an InputStream. How can I read the whole content of an InputStream into a byte array?
InputStream in; //assuming already present
byte[] data = new byte[in.available()];
in.read(data);//now data is filled with the whole content of the InputStream
I could read multiple times into a buffer of a fixed size, but then, I will have to combine the data I read into a single byte array, which is a problem for me.

The simplest approach IMO is to use Guava and its ByteStreams class:
byte[] bytes = ByteStreams.toByteArray(in);
Or for a file:
byte[] bytes = Files.toByteArray(file);
Alternatively (if you didn't want to use Guava), you could create a ByteArrayOutputStream, and repeatedly read into a byte array and write into the ByteArrayOutputStream (letting that handle resizing), then call ByteArrayOutputStream.toByteArray().
Note that this approach works whether you can tell the length of your input or not - assuming you have enough memory, of course.

Please keep in mind that the answers here assume that the length of the file is less than or equal to Integer.MAX_VALUE(2147483647).
If you are reading in from a file, you can do something like this:
File file = new File("myFile");
byte[] fileData = new byte[(int) file.length()];
DataInputStream dis = new DataInputStream(new FileInputStream(file));
dis.readFully(fileData);
dis.close();
UPDATE (May 31, 2014):
Java 7 adds some new features in the java.nio.file package that can be used to make this example a few lines shorter. See the readAllBytes() method in the java.nio.file.Files class. Here is a short example:
import java.nio.file.FileSystems;
import java.nio.file.Files;
import java.nio.file.Path;
// ...
Path p = FileSystems.getDefault().getPath("", "myFile");
byte [] fileData = Files.readAllBytes(p);
Android has support for this starting in Api level 26 (8.0.0, Oreo).

You can use Apache commons-io for this task:
Refer to this method:
public static byte[] readFileToByteArray(File file) throws IOException
Update:
Java 7 way:
byte[] bytes = Files.readAllBytes(Paths.get(filename));
and if it is a text file and you want to convert it to String (change encoding as needed):
StandardCharsets.UTF_8.decode(ByteBuffer.wrap(bytes)).toString()

You can read it by chunks (byte buffer[] = new byte[2048]) and write the chunks to a ByteArrayOutputStream. From the ByteArrayOutputStream you can retrieve the contents as a byte[], without needing to determine its size beforehand.

I believe buffer length needs to be specified, as memory is finite and you may run out of it
Example:
InputStream in = new FileInputStream(strFileName);
long length = fileFileName.length();
if (length > Integer.MAX_VALUE) {
throw new IOException("File is too large!");
}
byte[] bytes = new byte[(int) length];
int offset = 0;
int numRead = 0;
while (offset < bytes.length && (numRead = in.read(bytes, offset, bytes.length - offset)) >= 0) {
offset += numRead;
}
if (offset < bytes.length) {
throw new IOException("Could not completely read file " + fileFileName.getName());
}
in.close();

Max value for array index is Integer.MAX_INT - it's around 2Gb (2^31 / 2 147 483 647).
Your input stream can be bigger than 2Gb, so you have to process data in chunks, sorry.
InputStream is;
final byte[] buffer = new byte[512 * 1024 * 1024]; // 512Mb
while(true) {
final int read = is.read(buffer);
if ( read < 0 ) {
break;
}
// do processing
}