Get an OutputStream into a String

What's the best way to pipe the output from an java.io.OutputStream to a String in Java?

Say I have the method:

  writeToStream(Object o, OutputStream out)

Which writes certain data from the object to the given stream. However, I want to get this output into a String as easily as possible.

I'm considering writing a class like this (untested):

class StringOutputStream extends OutputStream {

  StringBuilder mBuf;

  public void write(int byte) throws IOException {
    mBuf.append((char) byte);
  }

  public String getString() {
    return mBuf.toString();
  }
}

But is there a better way? I only want to run a test!

I would use a ByteArrayOutputStream. And on finish you can call:

new String( baos.toByteArray(), codepage );

or better:

baos.toString( codepage );

For the String constructor, the codepage can be a String or an instance of java.nio.charset.Charset. A possible value is java.nio.charset.StandardCharsets.UTF_8.

The method toString() accepts only a String as a codepage parameter (stand Java 8).

I like the Apache Commons IO library. Take a look at its version of ByteArrayOutputStream, which has a toString(String enc) method as well as toByteArray() . Using existing and trusted components like the Commons project lets your code be smaller and easier to extend and repurpose.

This worked nicely

OutputStream output = new OutputStream() {
    private StringBuilder string = new StringBuilder();

    @Override
    public void write(int b) throws IOException {
        this.string.append((char) b );
    }
            
    //Netbeans IDE automatically overrides this toString()
    public String toString() {
        return this.string.toString();
    }
};

method call =>> marshaller.marshal( (Object) toWrite , (OutputStream) output);

then to print the string or get it just reference the "output" stream itself As an example, to print the string out to console =>> System.out.println(output);

FYI: my method call marshaller.marshal(Object,Outputstream) is for working with XML. It is irrelevant to this topic.

This is highly wasteful for productional use, there is a way too many conversion and it is a bit loose. This was just coded to prove to you that it is totally possible to create a custom OuputStream and output a string. But just go Horcrux7 way and all is good with merely two method calls.

And the world lives on another day....

Here's what I ended up doing:

Obj.writeToStream(toWrite, os);
try {
    String out = new String(os.toByteArray(), "UTF-8");
    assertTrue(out.contains("testString"));
} catch (UnsupportedEncondingException e) {
    fail("Caught exception: " + e.getMessage());
}

Where os is a ByteArrayOutputStream.

baos.toString(StandardCharsets.UTF_8);

>Converts the buffer's contents into a string by decoding the bytes using the named charset.

Java 17 - https://docs.oracle.com/