Develop Reference

How to convert binary payload (file) to byte[] in java?

I receive json data that contains binary data like that ,and I would like to convert that data to byte[] in java but I don't know how ?.
"payload": "7V1bcxs3ln6frfdcfvfbghfdX8HSw9Zu1QzzartyhblfdcvberCObjvJpkiJUpmhRI1pKXYeXHRsZLSrCy
5dElN5tfvQaO72TdSoiOS3TH8Yxdffgtg754679513qdfrgvlslsqdeqaepdccngrdzedrtghBD+d++e7v//p80/v96v7h+u72
+z1gfK/39x/+9t391cPTzeP88aE/++Fvvd53n+8+Xd1c/fBm/unqAf+7
N7v65en++vGP3vx2fvPHw/XDdwfpHf5mevhq/vQDcnAAwD+gEPwDF+bDxTv+3UF61d/4eesrfP356uFx"

Based on the observation that the "binary" string consists of ASCII letters, digits and "+" and "/", I am fairly confident that it is actually Base64 encoded data.
To decode Base64 to a byte[] you can do something like this:
String s = "7V1bcxs3ln6...";
byte [] bytes = java.util.Base64.getDecoder().decode(s);
The decode call will throw IllegalArgumentException if the input string is not properly Base64 encoded.
When I decoded that particular string using an online Base64 decoder, the result is unintelligible. But that is what I would expect for an arbitrary "blob" of binary data.

In general if you have a String in some object that denotes the json payload you can :
String s = "7V1bcxs3ln6...";
byte [] bytes = s.getBytes();
Other than that if this payload should be decoded somehow then additional code will be required.

In my case I had to convert payload that I knew it was a text something like:
{"payload":"eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjo0LCJ1c2VybmFtZSI6IngiLCJjaXR5IjoiaGVyZSJ9"}
This is the difference between java.util.Base64.getDecoder() and getBytes():
String s = "eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjo0LCJ1c2VybmFtZSI6IngiLCJjaXR5IjoiaGVyZSJ9";
byte [] bytes = s.getBytes();
byte [] bytes_base64 = java.util.Base64.getDecoder().decode(s);
String bytesToStr = new String(bytes, StandardCharsets.UTF_8);
String bytesBase64Tostr = new String(bytes_base64, StandardCharsets.UTF_8);
System.out.println("bytesToStr="+bytesToStr);
System.out.println("bytesBase64Tostr="+bytesBase64Tostr);
Output:
bytesToStr=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjo0LCJ1c2VybmFtZSI6IngiLCJjaXR5IjoiaGVyZSJ9
bytesBase64Tostr={"user_id":4,"username":"x","city":"here"}
java.util.Base64.getDecoder() worked for in my case

Convert byte[] to String and back

I'm trying to save content of a pdf file in a json and thought of saving the pdf as String value converted from byte[].
byte[] byteArray = feature.convertPdfToByteArray(Paths.get("path.pdf"));
String byteString = new String(byteArray, StandardCharsets.UTF_8);
byte[] newByteArray = byteString.getBytes(StandardCharsets.UTF_8);
String secondString = new String(newByteArray, StandardCharsets.UTF_8);
System.out.println(secondString.equals(byteString));
System.out.println(Arrays.equals(byteArray, newByteArray));
System.out.println(byteArray.length + " vs " + newByteArray.length);
The result of the above code is as follows:
true
false
421371 vs 760998
The two String's are equal while the two byte[]s are not. Why is that and how to correctly convert/save a pdf inside a json?

You are probably using the wrong charset when reading from the PDF file.
For example, the character é (e with acute) does not exists in ISO-8859-1 :
byte[] byteArray = "é".getBytes(StandardCharsets.ISO_8859_1);
String byteString = new String(byteArray, StandardCharsets.UTF_8);
byte[] newByteArray = byteString.getBytes(StandardCharsets.UTF_8);
String secondString = new String(newByteArray, StandardCharsets.UTF_8);
System.out.println(secondString.equals(byteString));
System.out.println(Arrays.equals(byteArray, newByteArray));
System.out.println(byteArray.length + " vs " + newByteArray.length);
Output :
true
false
1 vs 3

Why is that
If the byteArray indeed contains a PDF, it most likely is not valid UTF-8. Thus, wherever
String byteString = new String(byteArray, StandardCharsets.UTF_8);
stumbles over a byte sequence which is not valid UTF-8, it will replace that by a Unicode replacement character. I.e. this line damages your data, most likely beyond repair. So the following
byte[] newByteArray = byteString.getBytes(StandardCharsets.UTF_8);
does not result in the original byte array but instead a damaged version of it.
The newByteArray, on the other hand, is the result of UTF-8 encoding a given string, byteString. Thus, newByteArray is valid UTF-8 and
String secondString = new String(newByteArray, StandardCharsets.UTF_8);
does not need to replace anything outside the UTF-8 mappings, in particular byteString and secondString are equal.
how to correctly convert/save a pdf inside a json?
As #mammago explained in his comment,
JSON is not the appropriate format for binary content (like files). You should propably use something like base64 to create a string out of your PDF and store that in your JSON object.

Issues in converting base64 decoded byte array to String in java

Issues in converting base64 decoded byte array to String in java :
public static String decode(String strcontent) throws Exception
{
BASE64Decoder decoder = new BASE64Decoder();
byte[] imgBytes = decoder.decodeBuffer(strcontent);
return new String(imgBytes);
}
With the above code; was trying to create a string out of the Base 64 decoded byte array (imgBytes ) & input strcontent is base 64 encoded string. For text files it working fine , but for PDF and image files the string conversion is having issues. Have tried different encoding as UTF-8 , UTF 16 etc. But no use. The returned string is different than the original one.
When tried to write the byte array to a file like :
OutputStream out = new FileOutputStream(##path);
out.write(imgBytes);
out.close();
File is getting created properly without any issues.
I tried the below code:
byte[] imgBytes= ( new String(imgBytes1)).getBytes(); //Converting to String and back to bytes
OutputStream out = new FileOutputStream(##Filename);
out.write(imgBytes); out.close();
This time the image file is corrupted.
Please suggest.

Java Convert String to byte[]

I wonder how you should do if you are going to convert an String that contains an array of bytes, actually bytes from an image into an byte array.
I guess this is a pretty common issue so i guess someone could give any suggestions.
If it is better to convert an JSONArray into an byte array i would like to know why.

I wonder how you should do if you are going to convert an String that contains an array of bytes, actually bytes from an image into an byte array.
It depends on how you've constructed the string in the first place. If something somewhere has used
new String(imageData)
then you've already lost information, potentially. Image data isn't text.
To propagate opaque binary data in text, you should use base64 (or potentially hex). Android already has a Base64 class that makes this easy:
String text = Base64.encodeToString(originalBytes, Base64.DEFAULT);
...
byte[] roundTrip = Base64.decode(text, Base64.DEFAULT);
EDIT: If you can't use that class, this public domain base64 encoder should work fine.

Byte[] to String
ByteArrayOutputStream baos = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
Your_Bitmap.compress(CompressFormat.PNG, 0 , baos); //bm is the bitmap object
byte[] b = baos.toByteArray();
String bytetostring = Base64.encodeToString(b, Base64.DEFAULT);
return bytetostring ;
String to Byte[]
byte[] data = Base64.decode("Your string", Base64.DEFAULT);
Bitmap bitmap = BitmapFactory.decodeByteArray(data , 0, data.length);

Convert a String to a byte array and then back to the original String

Is it possible to convert a string to a byte array and then convert it back to the original string in Java or Android?
My objective is to send some strings to a microcontroller (Arduino) and store it into EEPROM (which is the only 1  KB). I tried to use an MD5 hash, but it seems it's only one-way encryption. What can I do to deal with this issue?

I would suggest using the members of string, but with an explicit encoding:
byte[] bytes = text.getBytes("UTF-8");
String text = new String(bytes, "UTF-8");
By using an explicit encoding (and one which supports all of Unicode) you avoid the problems of just calling text.getBytes() etc:
You're explicitly using a specific encoding, so you know which encoding to use later, rather than relying on the platform default.
You know it will support all of Unicode (as opposed to, say, ISO-Latin-1).
EDIT: Even though UTF-8 is the default encoding on Android, I'd definitely be explicit about this. For example, this question only says "in Java or Android" - so it's entirely possible that the code will end up being used on other platforms.
Basically given that the normal Java platform can have different default encodings, I think it's best to be absolutely explicit. I've seen way too many people using the default encoding and losing data to take that risk.
EDIT: In my haste I forgot to mention that you don't have to use the encoding's name - you can use a Charset instead. Using Guava I'd really use:
byte[] bytes = text.getBytes(Charsets.UTF_8);
String text = new String(bytes, Charsets.UTF_8);

You can do it like this.
String to byte array
String stringToConvert = "This String is 76 characters long and will be converted to an array of bytes";
byte[] theByteArray = stringToConvert.getBytes();
http://www.javadb.com/convert-string-to-byte-array
Byte array to String
byte[] byteArray = new byte[] {87, 79, 87, 46, 46, 46};
String value = new String(byteArray);
http://www.javadb.com/convert-byte-array-to-string

Use [String.getBytes()][1] to convert to bytes and use [String(byte[] data)][2] constructor to convert back to string.

byte[] pdfBytes = Base64.decode(myPdfBase64String, Base64.DEFAULT)

import java.io.FileInputStream;
import java.io.ByteArrayOutputStream;
public class FileHashStream
{
// write a new method that will provide a new Byte array, and where this generally reads from an input stream
public static byte[] read(InputStream is) throws Exception
{
String path = /* type in the absolute path for the 'commons-codec-1.10-bin.zip' */;
// must need a Byte buffer
byte[] buf = new byte[1024 * 16]
// we will use 16 kilobytes
int len = 0;
// we need a new input stream
FileInputStream is = new FileInputStream(path);
// use the buffer to update our "MessageDigest" instance
while(true)
{
len = is.read(buf);
if(len < 0) break;
md.update(buf, 0, len);
}
// close the input stream
is.close();
// call the "digest" method for obtaining the final hash-result
byte[] ret = md.digest();
System.out.println("Length of Hash: " + ret.length);
for(byte b : ret)
{
System.out.println(b + ", ");
}
String compare = "49276d206b696c6c696e6720796f757220627261696e206c696b65206120706f69736f6e6f7573206d757368726f6f6d";
String verification = Hex.encodeHexString(ret);
System.out.println();
System.out.println("===")
System.out.println(verification);
System.out.println("Equals? " + verification.equals(compare));
}
}