File to byte[] in Java

Question

How do I convert a java.io.File to a byte[]?

Answer 1

public static byte[] readBytes(InputStream inputStream) throws IOException {
    byte[] buffer = new byte[32 * 1024];
    int bufferSize = 0;
    for (;;) {
        int read = inputStream.read(buffer, bufferSize, buffer.length - bufferSize);
        if (read == -1) {
            return Arrays.copyOf(buffer, bufferSize);
        }
        bufferSize += read;
        if (bufferSize == buffer.length) {
            buffer = Arrays.copyOf(buffer, bufferSize * 2);
        }
    }
}

Answer 2

Not only does the following way convert a java.io.File to a byte[], I also found it to be the fastest way to read in a file, when testing many different Java file reading methods against each other:

java.nio.file.Files.readAllBytes()

import java.io.File;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.nio.file.Files;

public class ReadFile_Files_ReadAllBytes {
  public static void main(String [] pArgs) throws IOException {
    String fileName = "c:\\temp\\sample-10KB.txt";
    File file = new File(fileName);

    byte [] fileBytes = Files.readAllBytes(file.toPath());
    char singleChar;
    for(byte b : fileBytes) {
      singleChar = (char) b;
      System.out.print(singleChar);
    }
  }
}

Answer 3

As someone said, Apache Commons File Utils might have what you are looking for

public static byte[] readFileToByteArray(File file) throws IOException

Example use (Program.java):

import org.apache.commons.io.FileUtils;
public class Program {
    public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
        File file = new File(args[0]);  // assume args[0] is the path to file
        byte[] data = FileUtils.readFileToByteArray(file);
        ...
    }
}

Answer 4

// Returns the contents of the file in a byte array.
    public static byte[] getBytesFromFile(File file) throws IOException {        
        // Get the size of the file
        long length = file.length();

        // You cannot create an array using a long type.
        // It needs to be an int type.
        // Before converting to an int type, check
        // to ensure that file is not larger than Integer.MAX_VALUE.
        if (length > Integer.MAX_VALUE) {
            // File is too large
            throw new IOException("File is too large!");
        }

        // Create the byte array to hold the data
        byte[] bytes = new byte[(int)length];

        // Read in the bytes
        int offset = 0;
        int numRead = 0;

        InputStream is = new FileInputStream(file);
        try {
            while (offset < bytes.length
                   && (numRead=is.read(bytes, offset, bytes.length-offset)) >= 0) {
                offset += numRead;
            }
        } finally {
            is.close();
        }

        // Ensure all the bytes have been read in
        if (offset < bytes.length) {
            throw new IOException("Could not completely read file "+file.getName());
        }
        return bytes;
    }

Answer 5

Since JDK 7 - one liner:

byte[] array = Files.readAllBytes(new File("/path/to/file").toPath());

No external dependencies needed.

Answer 6

I belive this is the easiest way:

org.apache.commons.io.FileUtils.readFileToByteArray(file);