How to clone an InputStream?

Question

I have a InputStream that I pass to a method to do some processing. I will use the same InputStream in other method, but after the first processing, the InputStream appears be closed inside the method.

How I can clone the InputStream to send to the method that closes him? There is another solution?

EDIT: the methods that closes the InputStream is an external method from a lib. I dont have control about closing or not.

private String getContent(HttpURLConnection con) {
    InputStream content = null;
    String charset = "";
    try {
        content = con.getInputStream();
        CloseShieldInputStream csContent = new CloseShieldInputStream(content);
        charset = getCharset(csContent);            
        return  IOUtils.toString(content,charset);
    } catch (Exception e) {
        System.out.println("Error downloading page: " + e);
        return null;
    }
}

private String getCharset(InputStream content) {
    try {
        Source parser = new Source(content);
        return parser.getEncoding();
    } catch (Exception e) {
        System.out.println("Error determining charset: " + e);
        return "UTF-8";
    }
}

Answer 1

If all you want to do is read the same information more than once, and the input data is small enough to fit into memory, you can copy the data from your InputStream to a ByteArrayOutputStream.

Then you can obtain the associated array of bytes and open as many "cloned" ByteArrayInputStreams as you like.

ByteArrayOutputStream baos = new ByteArrayOutputStream();

// Fake code simulating the copy
// You can generally do better with nio if you need...
// And please, unlike me, do something about the Exceptions :D
byte[] buffer = new byte[1024];
int len;
while ((len = input.read(buffer)) > -1 ) {
    baos.write(buffer, 0, len);
}
baos.flush();

// Open new InputStreams using the recorded bytes
// Can be repeated as many times as you wish
InputStream is1 = new ByteArrayInputStream(baos.toByteArray()); 
InputStream is2 = new ByteArrayInputStream(baos.toByteArray()); 

But if you really need to keep the original stream open to receive new data, then you will need to track this external close() method and prevent it from being called somehow.

Answer 2

The class below should do the trick. Just create an instance, call the "multiply" method, and provide the source input stream and the amount of duplicates you need.

Important: you must consume all cloned streams simultaneously in separate threads.

package foo.bar;

import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.InputStream;
import java.io.PipedInputStream;
import java.io.PipedOutputStream;
import java.util.concurrent.ExecutorService;
import java.util.concurrent.Executors;

public class InputStreamMultiplier {
    protected static final int BUFFER_SIZE = 1024;
    private ExecutorService executorService = Executors.newCachedThreadPool();

    public InputStream[] multiply(final InputStream source, int count) throws IOException {
        PipedInputStream[] ins = new PipedInputStream[count];
        final PipedOutputStream[] outs = new PipedOutputStream[count];

        for (int i = 0; i < count; i++)
        {
            ins[i] = new PipedInputStream();
            outs[i] = new PipedOutputStream(ins[i]);
        }

        executorService.execute(new Runnable() {
            public void run() {
                try {
                    copy(source, outs);
                } catch (IOException e) {
                    e.printStackTrace();
                }
            }
        });

        return ins;
    }

    protected void copy(final InputStream source, final PipedOutputStream[] outs) throws IOException {
        byte[] buffer = new byte[BUFFER_SIZE];
        int n = 0;
        try {
            while (-1 != (n = source.read(buffer))) {
                //write each chunk to all output streams
                for (PipedOutputStream out : outs) {
                    out.write(buffer, 0, n);
                }
            }
        } finally {
            //close all output streams
            for (PipedOutputStream out : outs) {
                try {
                    out.close();
                } catch (IOException e) {
                    e.printStackTrace();
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

Answer 3

You can't clone it, and how you are going to solve your problem depends on what the source of the data is.

One solution is to read all data from the InputStream into a byte array, and then create a ByteArrayInputStream around that byte array, and pass that input stream into your method.

Edit 1: That is, if the other method also needs to read the same data. I.e you want to "reset" the stream.

Answer 4

Below is the solution with Kotlin.

You can copy your InputStream into ByteArray

val inputStream = ...

val byteOutputStream = ByteArrayOutputStream()
inputStream.use { input ->
    byteOutputStream.use { output ->
        input.copyTo(output)
    }
}

val byteInputStream = ByteArrayInputStream(byteOutputStream.toByteArray())

If you need to read the byteInputStream multiple times, call byteInputStream.reset() before reading again.

https://code.luasoftware.com/tutorials/kotlin/how-to-clone-inputstream/

Answer 5

You want to use Apache's CloseShieldInputStream:

This is a wrapper that will prevent the stream from being closed. You'd do something like this.

InputStream is = null;

is = getStream(); //obtain the stream 
CloseShieldInputStream csis = new CloseShieldInputStream(is);

// call the bad function that does things it shouldn't
badFunction(csis);

// happiness follows: do something with the original input stream
is.read();

Answer 6

This might not work in all situations, but here is what I did: I extended the FilterInputStream class and do the required processing of the bytes as the external lib reads the data.

public class StreamBytesWithExtraProcessingInputStream extends FilterInputStream {

    protected StreamBytesWithExtraProcessingInputStream(InputStream in) {
        super(in);
    }

    @Override
    public int read() throws IOException {
        int readByte = super.read();
        processByte(readByte);
        return readByte;
    }

    @Override
    public int read(byte[] buffer, int offset, int count) throws IOException {
        int readBytes = super.read(buffer, offset, count);
        processBytes(buffer, offset, readBytes);
        return readBytes;
    }

    private void processBytes(byte[] buffer, int offset, int readBytes) {
       for (int i = 0; i < readBytes; i++) {
           processByte(buffer[i + offset]);
       }
    }

    private void processByte(int readByte) {
       // TODO do processing here
    }

}

Then you simply pass an instance of StreamBytesWithExtraProcessingInputStream where you would have passed in the input stream. With the original input stream as constructor parameter.

It should be noted that this works byte for byte, so don't use this if high performance is a requirement.