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How do an InputStream, InputStreamReader and BufferedReader work together in Java?

I am studying Android development (I'm a beginner in programming in general) and learning about HTTP networking and saw this code in the lesson:
private String readFromStream(InputStream inputStream) throws IOException {
StringBuilder output = new StringBuilder();
if (inputStream != null) {
InputStreamReader inputStreamReader = new InputStreamReader(inputStream, Charset.forName("UTF-8"));
BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(inputStreamReader);
String line = reader.readLine();
while (line != null) {
output.append(line);
line = reader.readLine();
}
}
return output.toString();
}
I don't understand exactly what InputStream, InputStreamReader and BufferedReader do. All of them have a read() method and also readLine() in the case of the BufferedReader.Why can't I only use the InputStream or only add the InputStreamReader? Why do I need to add the BufferedReader? I know it has to do with efficiency but I don't understand how.
I've been researching and the documentation for the BufferedReader tries to explain this but I still don't get who is doing what:
In general, each read request made of a Reader causes a corresponding
read request to be made of the underlying character or byte stream. It
is therefore advisable to wrap a BufferedReader around any Reader
whose read() operations may be costly, such as FileReaders and
InputStreamReaders. For example,
BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(new FileReader("foo.in"));
will buffer the input from the specified file. Without buffering, each
invocation of read() or readLine() could cause bytes to be read from
the file, converted into characters, and then returned, which can be
very inefficient.
So, I understand that the InputStream can only read one byte, the InputStreamReader a single character, and the BufferedReader a whole line and that it also does something about efficiency which is what I don't get. I would like to have a better understanding of who is doing what, so as to understand why I need all three of them and what the difference would be without one of them.
I've researched a lot here and elsewhere on the web and don't seem to find any explanation about this that I can understand, almost all tutorials just repeat the documentation info. Here are some related questions that maybe begin to explain this but don't go deeper and solve my confusion: Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4. I think it may have to do with this last question's explanation about system calls and returning. But I would like to understand what is meant by all this.
Could it be that the BufferedReader's readLine() calls the InputStreamReader's read() method which in turn calls the InputStream's read() method? And the InputStream returns bytes converted to int, returning a single byte at a time, the InputStreamReader reads enough of these to make a single character and converts it to int and returns a single character at a time, and the BufferedReader reads enough of these characters represented as integers to make up a whole line? And returns the whole line as a String, returning only once instead of several times? I don't know, I'm just trying to get how things work.
Lots of thanks in advance!

This Streams in Java concepts and usage link, give a very nice explanations.
Streams, Readers, Writers, BufferedReader, BufferedWriter – these are the terminologies you will deal with in Java. There are the classes provided in Java to operate with input and output. It is really worth to know how these are related and how it is used. This post will explore the Streams in Java and other related classes in detail. So let us start:
Let us define each of these in high level then dig deeper.
Streams
Used to deal with byte level data
Reader/Writer
Used to deal with character level. It supports various character encoding also.
BufferedReader/BufferedWriter
To increase performance. Data to be read will be buffered in to memory for quick access.
While these are for taking input, just the corresponding classes exists for output as well. For example, if there is an InputStream that is meant to read stream of byte, and OutputStream will help in writing stream of bytes.
InputStreams
There are many types of InputStreams java provides. Each connect to distinct data sources such as byte array, File etc.
For example FileInputStream connects to a file data source and could be used to read bytes from a File. While ByteArrayInputStream could be used to treat byte array as input stream.
OutputStream
This helps in writing bytes to a data source. For almost every InputStream there is a corresponding OutputStream, wherever it makes sense.
UPDATE
What is Buffered Stream?
Here I'm quoting from Buffered Streams, Java documentation (With a technical explanation):
Buffered Streams
Most of the examples we've seen so far use unbuffered I/O. This means
each read or write request is handled directly by the underlying OS.
This can make a program much less efficient, since each such request
often triggers disk access, network activity, or some other operation
that is relatively expensive.
To reduce this kind of overhead, the Java platform implements buffered
I/O streams. Buffered input streams read data from a memory area known
as a buffer; the native input API is called only when the buffer is
empty. Similarly, buffered output streams write data to a buffer, and
the native output API is called only when the buffer is full.
Sometimes I'm losing my hair reading a technical documentation. So, here I quote the more humane explanation from https://yfain.github.io/Java4Kids/:
In general, disk access is much slower than the processing performed
in memory; that’s why it’s not a good idea to access the disk a
thousand times to read a file of 1,000 bytes. To minimize the number
of times the disk is accessed, Java provides buffers, which serve as
reservoirs of data.
In reading File with FileInputStream then BufferedInputStream, the
class BufferedInputStream works as a middleman between FileInputStream
and the file itself. It reads a big chunk of bytes from a file into
memory (a buffer) in one shot, and the FileInputStream object then
reads single bytes from there, which are fast memory-to-memory
operations. BufferedOutputStream works similarly with the class
FileOutputStream.
The main idea here is to minimize disk access. Buffered streams are
not changing the type of the original streams — they just make reading
more efficient. A program performs stream chaining (or stream piping)
to connect streams, just as pipes are connected in plumbing.

InputStream, OutputStream, byte[], ByteBuffer are for binary data.
Reader, Writer, String, char are for text, internally Unicode, so that all scripts in the world may be combined (say Greek and Arabic).
InputStreamReader and OutputStreamWriter form a bridge between both. If you have some InputStream and know that its bytes is actually text in some encoding, Charset, then you can wrap the InputStream:
try (InputStreamReader reader =
new InputStreamReader(stream, StandardCharsets.UTF_8)) {
... read text ...
}
There is a constructor without Charset, but that is not portable, as it uses the default platform encoding.
On Android StandardCharset may not exist, use "UTF-8".
The derived classes FileInputStream and BufferedReader add something to the parent InputStream resp. Reader.
A FileInputStream is for input from a File, and BufferedReader uses a memory buffer, so the actual physical reading does not does not read character wise (inefficient). With new BufferedReader(otherReader) you add buffering to your original reader.
All this understood, there is the utility class Files with methods like newBufferedReader(Path, Charset) which add additional brevity.

I have read lots of articles on this very topic. I hope this might help you in some way.
Basically, the BufferedReader maintains an internal buffer.
During its read operation, it reads bytes from the files in bulk and stores that bytes in its internal buffer.
Now byte is passed to the program from that internal buffer for each read operation.
This reduces the number of communication between the program and the file or disks. Hence more efficient.

ByteArrayInputStream, SequenceInputStream, StringReader where to use

There are too many java.io classes, for some of them i really dont understand when we need them, for example:
ByteArrayInputStream, ByteArrayOutputStream
SequenceInputStream,
PushbackInputStream, PushbackReader
StringReader...
I mean some real-life usages
Can someone please explain...

I would say that your question is too wide.
However it is possible to give a very basic overview of java.io package. It contains interfaces and classes for data input and output operations, such as reading bytes from file. There are only few basic interfaces / classes:
DataInput / ObjectInput - readig Java primitives and objects
DataOutput / ObjectOutput - writing Java primitives and objects
InputStream - reading individual bytes
OutputStream - writing individial bytes
Reader - reading character data
Writer - writing character data
There are other useful interfaces (like Closeable), but these are less significant.
It is best if you read the JavaDoc of these classes. Some examples:
It is pretty obvious that you would use FileOutputStream to write something into a file.
Character data is represented by bytes (defined by character encoding), so you can wrap any output stream using OutputStreamWriter.
You have byte[] and want to read from it just like from InputStream? Use ByteArrayInputStream.
You want to be able to return read bytes back to the reader (usually only a single pass-through is supported)? Wrap your reader with PushbackReader.
You have some String and want to read from it just like from Reader? Use StringReader.
...
So if you need some specific stream/reader/writer, check java.io package, search the internet and ask a question on SO if needed.
Of course then there is java.nio package, which you should know about. But that is for a different topic.

Java file IO truncated while reading large files using BufferedInputStream

I have a function in which I am only given a BufferedInputStream and no other information about the file to be read. I unfortunately cannot alter the method definition as it is called by code I don't have access to. I've been using the code below to read the file and place its contents in a String:
public String[] doImport(BufferedInputStream stream) throws IOException, PersistenceException {
int bytesAvail = stream.available();
byte[] bytesRead = new byte[bytesAvail];
stream.read(bytesRead);
stream.close();
String fileContents = new String(bytesRead);
//more code here working with fileContents
}
My problem is that for large files (>2Gb), this code causes the program to either run extremely slowly or truncate the data, depending on the computer the program is executed on. Does anyone have a recommendation regarding how to deal with large files in this situation?

You're assuming that available() returns the size of the file; it does not. It returns the number of bytes available to be read, and that may be any number less than or equal to the size of the file.
Unfortunately there's no way to do what you want in just one shot without having some other source of information on the length of the file data (i.e., by calling java.io.File.length()). Instead, you have to possibly accumulate from multiple reads. One way is by using ByteArrayOutputStream. Read into a fixed, finite-size array, then write the data you read into a ByteArrayOutputStream. At the end, pull the byte array out. You'll need to use the three-argument forms of read() and write() and look at the return value of read() so you know exactly how many bytes were read into the buffer on each call.

I'm not sure why you don't think you can read it line-by-line. BufferedInputStream only describes how the underlying stream is accessed, it doesn't impose any restrictions on how you ultimately read data from it. You can use it just as if it were any other InputStream.
Namely, to read it line-by-line you could do
InputStreamReader streamReader = new InputStreamReader(stream);
BufferedInputReader lineReader = new BufferedInputReader(streamReader);
String line = lineReader.readLine();
...
[Edit] This response is to the original wording of the question, which asked specifically for a way to read the input file line-by-line.

How to store data in text file in java

How to store data in text file in java that has various attributes like name, author etc that will be inputted by the user on CLI.
any Idea?
Thanks

It sounds like the Java class that will suit you best is a FileWriter. However, if you are writing a file with Key=Value lines, then the Properties class might end up being the better choice.

"[S]tore data in text file" sounds like you want a readable format. You can use comma-separated value (CSV) files.
You can write your own CSV serializer (search on SO for "how to write csv java") or use a solution like the Java CSV library.

Use DataOutputStream and DataInputStream. Using this class make it easier to read integer, float, double data and others without needing to interpret if the read data should be an integer or a float data.
something lyk dis
DataOutputStream dos = new DataOutputStream(fos);
//
// Below we write some data to the cities.dat.
// DataOutputStream class have various method that allow
// us to write primitive type data and string. There are
// method called writeInt(), writeFloat(), writeUTF(),
// etc.
//
dos.writeInt(cityIdA);
dos.writeUTF(cityNameA);
dos.writeInt(cityPopulationA);
dos.writeFloat(cityTempA);
dos.writeInt(cityIdB);
dos.writeUTF(cityNameB);
dos.writeInt(cityPopulationB);
dos.writeFloat(cityTempB);
dos.flush();
dos.close();

Writing large strings with DataOutputStream

I've been doing some socket programming to transmit information across the wire. I've run into a problem with DataOutputStream.writeUTF(). It seems to allow strings of up to 64k but I have a few situations where I can run over this. Are there any good alternatives that support larger strings or do I need to roll my own?

It actually uses a two bytes to write the length of the string before using an algorithm that compacts it into one, two or three bytes per character. (See the documentation on java.io.DataOutput) It is close to UTF-8, but even though documented as being so, there are compatibility problems. If you are not terribly worried about the amount of data you will be writing, you can easily write your own by writing the length of the string first, and then the raw data of the string using the getBytes method.
// Write data
String str="foo";
byte[] data=str.getBytes("UTF-8");
out.writeInt(data.length);
out.write(data);
// Read data
int length=in.readInt();
byte[] data=new byte[length];
in.readFully(data);
String str=new String(data,"UTF-8");

ObjectOutputStream.writeObject() properly handles long strings (verified by looking at the source code). Write the string out this way:
ObjectOutputStream oos = new ObjectOutputStream(out);
... other write operations ...
oos.writeObject(myString);
... other write operations ...
Read it this way:
ObjectInputStream ois = new ObjectInputStream(in);
... other read operations ...
String myString = (String) ois.readObject();
... other read operations ...
Another difference with DataOutputStream is that using ObjectOutputStream automatically writes a 4-byte stream header when instantiated, but its usually going to be a pretty small penalty to pay.

You should be able to use OutputStreamWriter with the UTF-8 encoding. There's no explicit writeUTF method, but you can set the charset in the constructor. Try
Writer osw = new OutputStreamWriter(out, "UTF-8");
where out is whatever OutputStream you're wrapping now.