How do I read / convert an InputStream into a String in Java?

If you have a java.io.InputStream object, how should you process that object and produce a String?

---

Suppose I have an InputStream that contains text data, and I want to convert it to a String, so for example I can write that to a log file.

What is the easiest way to take the InputStream and convert it to a String?

public String convertStreamToString(InputStream is) {
    // ???
}

Summarize other answers I found 11 main ways to do this (see below). And I wrote some performance tests (see results below):

Ways to convert an InputStream to a String:

1. Using IOUtils.toString (Apache Utils)

    String result = IOUtils.toString(inputStream, StandardCharsets.UTF_8);
   

2. Using CharStreams (Guava)

    String result = CharStreams.toString(new InputStreamReader(
          inputStream, Charsets.UTF_8));
   

3. Using Scanner (JDK)

    Scanner s = new Scanner(inputStream).useDelimiter("\\A");
    String result = s.hasNext() ? s.next() : "";
   

4. Using Stream API (Java 8). Warning: This solution converts different line breaks (like \r\n) to \n.

    String result = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(inputStream))
      .lines().collect(Collectors.joining("\n"));
   

5. Using parallel Stream API (Java 8). Warning: This solution converts different line breaks (like \r\n) to \n.

    String result = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(inputStream))
       .lines().parallel().collect(Collectors.joining("\n"));
   

6. Using InputStreamReader and StringBuilder (JDK)

    int bufferSize = 1024;
    char[] buffer = new char[bufferSize];
    StringBuilder out = new StringBuilder();
    Reader in = new InputStreamReader(stream, StandardCharsets.UTF_8);
    for (int numRead; (numRead = in.read(buffer, 0, buffer.length)) > 0; ) {
        out.append(buffer, 0, numRead);
    }
    return out.toString();
   

7. Using StringWriter and IOUtils.copy (Apache Commons)

    StringWriter writer = new StringWriter();
    IOUtils.copy(inputStream, writer, "UTF-8");
    return writer.toString();
   

8. Using ByteArrayOutputStream and inputStream.read (JDK)

    ByteArrayOutputStream result = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
    byte[] buffer = new byte[1024];
    for (int length; (length = inputStream.read(buffer)) != -1; ) {
        result.write(buffer, 0, length);
    }
    // StandardCharsets.UTF_8.name() > JDK 7
    return result.toString("UTF-8");
   

9. Using BufferedReader (JDK). Warning: This solution converts different line breaks (like \n\r) to line.separator system property (for example, in Windows to "\r\n").

    String newLine = System.getProperty("line.separator");
    BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(
            new InputStreamReader(inputStream));
    StringBuilder result = new StringBuilder();
    for (String line; (line = reader.readLine()) != null; ) {
        if (result.length() > 0) {
            result.append(newLine);
        }
        result.append(line);
    }
    return result.toString();
   

10. Using BufferedInputStream and ByteArrayOutputStream (JDK)

    BufferedInputStream bis = new BufferedInputStream(inputStream);
    ByteArrayOutputStream buf = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
    for (int result = bis.read(); result != -1; result = bis.read()) {
        buf.write((byte) result);
    }
    // StandardCharsets.UTF_8.name() > JDK 7
    return buf.toString("UTF-8");
    

11. Using inputStream.read() and StringBuilder (JDK). Warning: This solution has problems with Unicode, for example with Russian text (works correctly only with non-Unicode text)

    StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
    for (int ch; (ch = inputStream.read()) != -1; ) {
        sb.append((char) ch);
    }
    return sb.toString();
    

Warning:

1. Solutions 4, 5 and 9 convert different line breaks to one.

2. Solution 11 can't work correctly with Unicode text

Performance tests

Performance tests for small String (length = 175), url in github (mode = Average Time, system = Linux, score 1,343 is the best):

              Benchmark                         Mode  Cnt   Score   Error  Units
 8. ByteArrayOutputStream and read (JDK)        avgt   10   1,343 ± 0,028  us/op
 6. InputStreamReader and StringBuilder (JDK)   avgt   10   6,980 ± 0,404  us/op
10. BufferedInputStream, ByteArrayOutputStream  avgt   10   7,437 ± 0,735  us/op
11. InputStream.read() and StringBuilder (JDK)  avgt   10   8,977 ± 0,328  us/op
 7. StringWriter and IOUtils.copy (Apache)      avgt   10  10,613 ± 0,599  us/op
 1. IOUtils.toString (Apache Utils)             avgt   10  10,605 ± 0,527  us/op
 3. Scanner (JDK)                               avgt   10  12,083 ± 0,293  us/op
 2. CharStreams (guava)                         avgt   10  12,999 ± 0,514  us/op
 4. Stream Api (Java 8)                         avgt   10  15,811 ± 0,605  us/op
 9. BufferedReader (JDK)                        avgt   10  16,038 ± 0,711  us/op
 5. parallel Stream Api (Java 8)                avgt   10  21,544 ± 0,583  us/op

Performance tests for big String (length = 50100), url in github (mode = Average Time, system = Linux, score 200,715 is the best):

               Benchmark                        Mode  Cnt   Score        Error  Units
 8. ByteArrayOutputStream and read (JDK)        avgt   10   200,715 ±   18,103  us/op
 1. IOUtils.toString (Apache Utils)             avgt   10   300,019 ±    8,751  us/op
 6. InputStreamReader and StringBuilder (JDK)   avgt   10   347,616 ±  130,348  us/op
 7. StringWriter and IOUtils.copy (Apache)      avgt   10   352,791 ±  105,337  us/op
 2. CharStreams (guava)                         avgt   10   420,137 ±   59,877  us/op
 9. BufferedReader (JDK)                        avgt   10   632,028 ±   17,002  us/op
 5. parallel Stream Api (Java 8)                avgt   10   662,999 ±   46,199  us/op
 4. Stream Api (Java 8)                         avgt   10   701,269 ±   82,296  us/op
10. BufferedInputStream, ByteArrayOutputStream  avgt   10   740,837 ±    5,613  us/op
 3. Scanner (JDK)                               avgt   10   751,417 ±   62,026  us/op
11. InputStream.read() and StringBuilder (JDK)  avgt   10  2919,350 ± 1101,942  us/op

Graphs (performance tests depending on Input Stream length in Windows 7 system)

Performance test (Average Time) depending on Input Stream length in Windows 7 system:

 length  182	546	    1092	3276	9828	29484	58968

 test8 	0.38	0.938	1.868	4.448	13.412	36.459	72.708
 test4 	2.362	3.609	5.573	12.769	40.74	81.415	159.864
 test5 	3.881	5.075	6.904	14.123	50.258	129.937	166.162
 test9 	2.237	3.493	5.422	11.977	45.98	89.336	177.39
 test6 	1.261	2.12	4.38	10.698	31.821	86.106	186.636
 test7 	1.601	2.391	3.646	8.367	38.196	110.221	211.016
 test1 	1.529	2.381	3.527	8.411	40.551	105.16	212.573
 test3 	3.035	3.934	8.606	20.858	61.571	118.744	235.428
 test2 	3.136	6.238	10.508	33.48	43.532	118.044	239.481
 test10 1.593	4.736	7.527	20.557	59.856	162.907	323.147
 test11 3.913	11.506	23.26	68.644	207.591	600.444	1211.545

A nice way to do this is using Apache commons IOUtils to copy the InputStream into a StringWriter... something like

StringWriter writer = new StringWriter();
IOUtils.copy(inputStream, writer, encoding);
String theString = writer.toString();

or even

// NB: does not close inputStream, you'll have to use try-with-resources for that
String theString = IOUtils.toString(inputStream, encoding); 

Alternatively, you could use ByteArrayOutputStream if you don't want to mix your Streams and Writers

Here's a way using only the standard Java library (note that the stream is not closed, your mileage may vary).

static String convertStreamToString(java.io.InputStream is) {
    java.util.Scanner s = new java.util.Scanner(is).useDelimiter("\\A");
    return s.hasNext() ? s.next() : "";
}

I learned this trick from "Stupid Scanner tricks" article. The reason it works is because Scanner iterates over tokens in the stream, and in this case we separate tokens using "beginning of the input boundary" (\A), thus giving us only one token for the entire contents of the stream.

Note, if you need to be specific about the input stream's encoding, you can provide the second argument to Scanner constructor that indicates what character set to use (e.g. "UTF-8").

Hat tip goes also to Jacob, who once pointed me to the said article.

Apache Commons allows:

String myString = IOUtils.toString(myInputStream, "UTF-8");

Of course, you could choose other character encodings besides UTF-8.

Also see: (documentation)

Taking into account file one should first get a java.io.Reader instance. This can then be read and added to a StringBuilder (we don't need StringBuffer if we are not accessing it in multiple threads, and StringBuilder is faster). The trick here is that we work in blocks, and as such don't need other buffering streams. The block size is parameterized for run-time performance optimization.

public static String slurp(final InputStream is, final int bufferSize) {
    final char[] buffer = new char[bufferSize];
    final StringBuilder out = new StringBuilder();
    try (Reader in = new InputStreamReader(is, "UTF-8")) {
        for (;;) {
            int rsz = in.read(buffer, 0, buffer.length);
            if (rsz < 0)
                break;
            out.append(buffer, 0, rsz);
        }
    }
    catch (UnsupportedEncodingException ex) {
        /* ... */
    }
    catch (IOException ex) {
        /* ... */
    }
    return out.toString();
}

Use:

InputStream in = /* Your InputStream */;
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(in));
String read;

while ((read=br.readLine()) != null) {
    //System.out.println(read);
    sb.append(read);
}

br.close();
return sb.toString();

If you are using Google-Collections/Guava you could do the following:

InputStream stream = ...
String content = CharStreams.toString(new InputStreamReader(stream, Charsets.UTF_8));
Closeables.closeQuietly(stream);

Note that the second parameter (i.e. Charsets.UTF_8) for the InputStreamReader isn't necessary, but it is generally a good idea to specify the encoding if you know it (which you should!)

For completeness here is Java 9 solution:

public static String toString(InputStream input) throws IOException {
    return new String(input.readAllBytes(), StandardCharsets.UTF_8);
}

This uses the readAllBytes method which was added to Java 9.

This is the best pure Java solution that fits perfectly for Android and any other JVM.

This solution works amazingly well... it is simple, fast, and works on small and large streams just the same!! (see benchmark above.. No. 8)

public String readFullyAsString(InputStream inputStream, String encoding)
        throws IOException {
    return readFully(inputStream).toString(encoding);
}

public byte[] readFullyAsBytes(InputStream inputStream)
        throws IOException {
    return readFully(inputStream).toByteArray();
}

private ByteArrayOutputStream readFully(InputStream inputStream)
        throws IOException {
    ByteArrayOutputStream baos = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
    byte[] buffer = new byte[1024];
    int length = 0;
    while ((length = inputStream.read(buffer)) != -1) {
        baos.write(buffer, 0, length);
    }
    return baos;
}

Use:

import java.io.BufferedInputStream;
import java.io.ByteArrayOutputStream;
import java.io.InputStream;
import java.io.IOException;

public static String readInputStreamAsString(InputStream in)
    throws IOException {

    BufferedInputStream bis = new BufferedInputStream(in);
    ByteArrayOutputStream buf = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
    int result = bis.read();
    while(result != -1) {
      byte b = (byte)result;
      buf.write(b);
      result = bis.read();
    }
    return buf.toString();
}

Here's the most elegant, pure-Java (no library) solution I came up with after some experimentation:

public static String fromStream(InputStream in) throws IOException
{
    BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(in));
    StringBuilder out = new StringBuilder();
    String newLine = System.getProperty("line.separator");
    String line;
    while ((line = reader.readLine()) != null) {
        out.append(line);
        out.append(newLine);
    }
    return out.toString();
}

I did a benchmark upon 14 distinct answers here (sorry for not providing credits but there are too many duplicates).

The result is very surprising. It turns out that Apache IOUtils is the slowest and ByteArrayOutputStream is the fastest solutions:

So first here is the best method:

public String inputStreamToString(InputStream inputStream) throws IOException {
    try(ByteArrayOutputStream result = new ByteArrayOutputStream()) {
        byte[] buffer = new byte[1024];
        int length;
        while ((length = inputStream.read(buffer)) != -1) {
            result.write(buffer, 0, length);
        }

        return result.toString(UTF_8);
    }
}

Benchmark results, of 20 MB random bytes in 20 cycles

Time in milliseconds

• ByteArrayOutputStreamTest: 194
• NioStream: 198
• Java9ISTransferTo: 201
• Java9ISReadAllBytes: 205
• BufferedInputStreamVsByteArrayOutputStream: 314
• ApacheStringWriter2: 574
• GuavaCharStreams: 589
• ScannerReaderNoNextTest: 614
• ScannerReader: 633
• ApacheStringWriter: 1544
• StreamApi: Error
• ParallelStreamApi: Error
• BufferReaderTest: Error
• InputStreamAndStringBuilder: Error

Benchmark source code

import com.google.common.io.CharStreams;
import org.apache.commons.io.IOUtils;

import java.io.*;
import java.nio.ByteBuffer;
import java.nio.channels.Channels;
import java.nio.channels.ReadableByteChannel;
import java.nio.channels.WritableByteChannel;
import java.util.Arrays;
import java.util.List;
import java.util.Random;
import java.util.stream.Collectors;

/**
 * Created by Ilya Gazman on 2/13/18.
 */
public class InputStreamToString {


    private static final String UTF_8 = "UTF-8";

    public static void main(String... args) {
        log("App started");
        byte[] bytes = new byte[1024 * 1024];
        new Random().nextBytes(bytes);
        log("Stream is ready\n");

        try {
            test(bytes);
        } catch (IOException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }

    private static void test(byte[] bytes) throws IOException {
        List<Stringify> tests = Arrays.asList(
                new ApacheStringWriter(),
                new ApacheStringWriter2(),
                new NioStream(),
                new ScannerReader(),
                new ScannerReaderNoNextTest(),
                new GuavaCharStreams(),
                new StreamApi(),
                new ParallelStreamApi(),
                new ByteArrayOutputStreamTest(),
                new BufferReaderTest(),
                new BufferedInputStreamVsByteArrayOutputStream(),
                new InputStreamAndStringBuilder(),
                new Java9ISTransferTo(),
                new Java9ISReadAllBytes()
        );

        String solution = new String(bytes, "UTF-8");

        for (Stringify test : tests) {
            try (ByteArrayInputStream inputStream = new ByteArrayInputStream(bytes)) {
                String s = test.inputStreamToString(inputStream);
                if (!s.equals(solution)) {
                    log(test.name() + ": Error");
                    continue;
                }
            }
            long startTime = System.currentTimeMillis();
            for (int i = 0; i < 20; i++) {
                try (ByteArrayInputStream inputStream = new ByteArrayInputStream(bytes)) {
                    test.inputStreamToString(inputStream);
                }
            }
            log(test.name() + ": " + (System.currentTimeMillis() - startTime));
        }
    }

    private static void log(String message) {
        System.out.println(message);
    }

    interface Stringify {
        String inputStreamToString(InputStream inputStream) throws IOException;

        default String name() {
            return this.getClass().getSimpleName();
        }
    }

    static class ApacheStringWriter implements Stringify {

        @Override
        public String inputStreamToString(InputStream inputStream) throws IOException {
            StringWriter writer = new StringWriter();
            IOUtils.copy(inputStream, writer, UTF_8);
            return writer.toString();
        }
    }

    static class ApacheStringWriter2 implements Stringify {

        @Override
        public String inputStreamToString(InputStream inputStream) throws IOException {
            return IOUtils.toString(inputStream, UTF_8);
        }
    }

    static class NioStream implements Stringify {

        @Override
        public String inputStreamToString(InputStream in) throws IOException {
            ReadableByteChannel channel = Channels.newChannel(in);
            ByteBuffer byteBuffer = ByteBuffer.allocate(1024 * 16);
            ByteArrayOutputStream bout = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
            WritableByteChannel outChannel = Channels.newChannel(bout);
            while (channel.read(byteBuffer) > 0 || byteBuffer.position() > 0) {
                byteBuffer.flip();  //make buffer ready for write
                outChannel.write(byteBuffer);
                byteBuffer.compact(); //make buffer ready for reading
            }
            channel.close();
            outChannel.close();
            return bout.toString(UTF_8);
        }
    }

    static class ScannerReader implements Stringify {

        @Override
        public String inputStreamToString(InputStream is) throws IOException {
            java.util.Scanner s = new java.util.Scanner(is).useDelimiter("\\A");
            return s.hasNext() ? s.next() : "";
        }
    }

    static class ScannerReaderNoNextTest implements Stringify {

        @Override
        public String inputStreamToString(InputStream is) throws IOException {
            java.util.Scanner s = new java.util.Scanner(is).useDelimiter("\\A");
            return s.next();
        }
    }

    static class GuavaCharStreams implements Stringify {

        @Override
        public String inputStreamToString(InputStream is) throws IOException {
            return CharStreams.toString(new InputStreamReader(
                    is, UTF_8));
        }
    }

    static class StreamApi implements Stringify {

        @Override
        public String inputStreamToString(InputStream inputStream) throws IOException {
            return new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(inputStream))
                    .lines().collect(Collectors.joining("\n"));
        }
    }

    static class ParallelStreamApi implements Stringify {

        @Override
        public String inputStreamToString(InputStream inputStream) throws IOException {
            return new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(inputStream)).lines()
                    .parallel().collect(Collectors.joining("\n"));
        }
    }

    static class ByteArrayOutputStreamTest implements Stringify {

        @Override
        public String inputStreamToString(InputStream inputStream) throws IOException {
            try(ByteArrayOutputStream result = new ByteArrayOutputStream()) {
                byte[] buffer = new byte[1024];
                int length;
                while ((length = inputStream.read(buffer)) != -1) {
                    result.write(buffer, 0, length);
                }

                return result.toString(UTF_8);
            }
        }
    }

    static class BufferReaderTest implements Stringify {

        @Override
        public String inputStreamToString(InputStream inputStream) throws IOException {
            String newLine = System.getProperty("line.separator");
            BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(inputStream));
            StringBuilder result = new StringBuilder(UTF_8);
            String line;
            boolean flag = false;
            while ((line = reader.readLine()) != null) {
                result.append(flag ? newLine : "").append(line);
                flag = true;
            }
            return result.toString();
        }
    }

    static class BufferedInputStreamVsByteArrayOutputStream implements Stringify {

        @Override
        public String inputStreamToString(InputStream inputStream) throws IOException {
            BufferedInputStream bis = new BufferedInputStream(inputStream);
            ByteArrayOutputStream buf = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
            int result = bis.read();
            while (result != -1) {
                buf.write((byte) result);
                result = bis.read();
            }

            return buf.toString(UTF_8);
        }
    }

    static class InputStreamAndStringBuilder implements Stringify {

        @Override
        public String inputStreamToString(InputStream inputStream) throws IOException {
            int ch;
            StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(UTF_8);
            while ((ch = inputStream.read()) != -1)
                sb.append((char) ch);
            return sb.toString();
        }
    }

    static class Java9ISTransferTo implements Stringify {

        @Override
        public String inputStreamToString(InputStream inputStream) throws IOException {
            ByteArrayOutputStream bos = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
            inputStream.transferTo(bos);
            return bos.toString(UTF_8);
        }
    }

    static class Java9ISReadAllBytes implements Stringify {

        @Override
        public String inputStreamToString(InputStream inputStream) throws IOException {
            return new String(inputStream.readAllBytes(), UTF_8);
        }
    }

}

I'd use some Java 8 tricks.

public static String streamToString(final InputStream inputStream) throws Exception {
    // buffering optional
    try
    (
        final BufferedReader br
           = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(inputStream))
    ) {
        // parallel optional
        return br.lines().parallel().collect(Collectors.joining("\n"));
    } catch (final IOException e) {
        throw new RuntimeException(e);
        // whatever.
    }
}

Essentially the same as some other answers except more succinct.

I ran some timing tests because time matters, always.

I attempted to get the response into a String 3 different ways. (shown below)
I left out try/catch blocks for the sake readability.

To give context, this is the preceding code for all 3 approaches:

   String response;
   String url = "www.blah.com/path?key=value";
   GetMethod method = new GetMethod(url);
   int status = client.executeMethod(method);

1)

 response = method.getResponseBodyAsString();

2)

InputStream resp = method.getResponseBodyAsStream();
InputStreamReader is=new InputStreamReader(resp);
BufferedReader br=new BufferedReader(is);
String read = null;
StringBuffer sb = new StringBuffer();
while((read = br.readLine()) != null) {
    sb.append(read);
}
response = sb.toString();

3)

InputStream iStream  = method.getResponseBodyAsStream();
StringWriter writer = new StringWriter();
IOUtils.copy(iStream, writer, "UTF-8");
response = writer.toString();

So, after running 500 tests on each approach with the same request/response data, here are the numbers. Once again, these are my findings and your findings may not be exactly the same, but I wrote this to give some indication to others of the efficiency differences of these approaches.

Ranks:
Approach #1
Approach #3 - 2.6% slower than #1
Approach #2 - 4.3% slower than #1

Any of these approaches is an appropriate solution for grabbing a response and creating a String from it.

Pure Java solution using Streams, works since Java 8.

import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.InputStream;
import java.io.InputStreamReader;
import java.util.stream.Collectors;

// ...
public static String inputStreamToString(InputStream is) throws IOException {
    try (BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(is))) {
        return br.lines().collect(Collectors.joining(System.lineSeparator()));
    }
}

As mentioned by Christoffer Hammarström below other answer it is safer to explicitly specify the Charset. I.e. The InputStreamReader constructor can be changes as follows:

new InputStreamReader(is, Charset.forName("UTF-8"))

Here's more-or-less sampath's answer, cleaned up a bit and represented as a function:

String streamToString(InputStream in) throws IOException {
  StringBuilder out = new StringBuilder();
  BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(in));
  for(String line = br.readLine(); line != null; line = br.readLine()) 
    out.append(line);
  br.close();
  return out.toString();
}

If you were feeling adventurous, you could mix Scala and Java and end up with this:

scala.io.Source.fromInputStream(is).mkString("")

Mixing Java and Scala code and libraries has it's benefits.

See full description here: https://stackoverflow.com/q/5221524/828757

If you can't use Commons IO (FileUtils/IOUtils/CopyUtils), here's an example using a BufferedReader to read the file line by line:

public class StringFromFile {
    public static void main(String[] args) /*throws UnsupportedEncodingException*/ {
        InputStream is = StringFromFile.class.getResourceAsStream("file.txt");
        BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(is/*, "UTF-8"*/));
        final int CHARS_PER_PAGE = 5000; //counting spaces
        StringBuilder builder = new StringBuilder(CHARS_PER_PAGE);
        try {
            for(String line=br.readLine(); line!=null; line=br.readLine()) {
                builder.append(line);
                builder.append('\n');
            }
        } 
        catch (IOException ignore) { }

        String text = builder.toString();
        System.out.println(text);
    }
}

Or if you want raw speed I'd propose a variation on what Paul de Vrieze suggested (which avoids using a StringWriter (which uses a StringBuffer internally):

public class StringFromFileFast {
    public static void main(String[] args) /*throws UnsupportedEncodingException*/ {
        InputStream is = StringFromFileFast.class.getResourceAsStream("file.txt");
        InputStreamReader input = new InputStreamReader(is/*, "UTF-8"*/);
        final int CHARS_PER_PAGE = 5000; //counting spaces
        final char[] buffer = new char[CHARS_PER_PAGE];
        StringBuilder output = new StringBuilder(CHARS_PER_PAGE);
        try {
            for(int read = input.read(buffer, 0, buffer.length);
                    read != -1;
                    read = input.read(buffer, 0, buffer.length)) {
                output.append(buffer, 0, read);
            }
        } catch (IOException ignore) { }

        String text = output.toString();
        System.out.println(text);
    }
}

Use the java.io.InputStream.transferTo(OutputStream) supported in Java 9 and the ByteArrayOutputStream.toString(String) which takes the charset name:

public static String gobble(InputStream in, String charsetName) throws IOException {
    ByteArrayOutputStream bos = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
    in.transferTo(bos);
    return bos.toString(charsetName);
}

Make sure to close the streams at end if you use Stream Readers

private String readStream(InputStream iStream) throws IOException {
    //build a Stream Reader, it can read char by char
    InputStreamReader iStreamReader = new InputStreamReader(iStream);
    //build a buffered Reader, so that i can read whole line at once
    BufferedReader bReader = new BufferedReader(iStreamReader);
    String line = null;
    StringBuilder builder = new StringBuilder();
    while((line = bReader.readLine()) != null) {  //Read till end
        builder.append(line);
        builder.append("\n"); // append new line to preserve lines
    }
    bReader.close();         //close all opened stuff
    iStreamReader.close();
    //iStream.close(); //EDIT: Let the creator of the stream close it!
                       // some readers may auto close the inner stream
    return builder.toString();
}

---

EDIT: On JDK 7+, you can use try-with-resources construct.

/**
 * Reads the stream into a string
 * @param iStream the input stream
 * @return the string read from the stream
 * @throws IOException when an IO error occurs
 */
private String readStream(InputStream iStream) throws IOException {

    //Buffered reader allows us to read line by line
    try (BufferedReader bReader =
                 new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(iStream))){
        StringBuilder builder = new StringBuilder();
        String line;
        while((line = bReader.readLine()) != null) {  //Read till end
            builder.append(line);
            builder.append("\n"); // append new line to preserve lines
        }
        return builder.toString();
    }
}

This one is nice because:

• It safely handles the Charset.
• You control the read buffer size.
• You can provision the length of the builder and it doesn't have to be an exact value.
• Is free from library dependencies.
• Is for Java 7 or higher.

How to do it?

public static String convertStreamToString(InputStream is) throws IOException {
   StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(2048); // Define a size if you have an idea of it.
   char[] read = new char[128]; // Your buffer size.
   try (InputStreamReader ir = new InputStreamReader(is, StandardCharsets.UTF_8)) {
     for (int i; -1 != (i = ir.read(read)); sb.append(read, 0, i));
   }
   return sb.toString();
}

For JDK 9

public static String inputStreamString(InputStream inputStream) throws IOException {
    try (inputStream) {
        return new String(inputStream.readAllBytes(), StandardCharsets.UTF_8);
    }
}

This is an answer adapted from org.apache.commons.io.IOUtils source code, for those who want to have the apache implementation but do not want the whole library.

private static final int BUFFER_SIZE = 4 * 1024;

public static String inputStreamToString(InputStream inputStream, String charsetName)
        throws IOException {
    StringBuilder builder = new StringBuilder();
    InputStreamReader reader = new InputStreamReader(inputStream, charsetName);
    char[] buffer = new char[BUFFER_SIZE];
    int length;
    while ((length = reader.read(buffer)) != -1) {
        builder.append(buffer, 0, length);
    }
    return builder.toString();
}

String inputStreamToString(InputStream inputStream, Charset charset) throws IOException {
    try (
            final StringWriter writer = new StringWriter();
            final InputStreamReader reader = new InputStreamReader(inputStream, charset)
        ) {
        reader.transferTo(writer);
        return writer.toString();
    }
}

• pure Java standard library solution - no libs
• since Java 10 - Reader#transferTo(java.io.Writer)
• loopless solution
• no new line character handling

Here is the complete method for converting InputStream into String without using any third party library. Use StringBuilder for single threaded environment otherwise use StringBuffer.

public static String getString( InputStream is) throws IOException {
    int ch;
    StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
    while((ch = is.read()) != -1)
        sb.append((char)ch);
    return sb.toString();
}

Another one, for all the Spring users:

import java.nio.charset.StandardCharsets;
import org.springframework.util.FileCopyUtils;

public String convertStreamToString(InputStream is) throws IOException { 
    return new String(FileCopyUtils.copyToByteArray(is), StandardCharsets.UTF_8);
}

The utility methods in org.springframework.util.StreamUtils are similar to the ones in FileCopyUtils, but they leave the stream open when done.

Here's how to do it using just the JDK using byte array buffers. This is actually how the commons-io IOUtils.copy() methods all work. You can replace byte[] with char[] if you're copying from a Reader instead of an InputStream.

import java.io.ByteArrayOutputStream;
import java.io.InputStream;

...

InputStream is = ....
ByteArrayOutputStream baos = new ByteArrayOutputStream(8192);
byte[] buffer = new byte[8192];
int count = 0;
try {
  while ((count = is.read(buffer)) != -1) {
    baos.write(buffer, 0, count);
  }
}
finally {
  try {
    is.close();
  }
  catch (Exception ignore) {
  }
}

String charset = "UTF-8";
String inputStreamAsString = baos.toString(charset);

Kotlin users simply do:

println(InputStreamReader(is).readText())

whereas

readText()

is Kotlin standard library’s built-in extension method.

The easiest way in JDK is with the following code snipplets.

String convertToString(InputStream in){
    String resource = new Scanner(in).useDelimiter("\\Z").next();
    return resource;
}

In terms of reduce, and concat it can be expressed in Java 8 as:

String fromFile = new BufferedReader(new   
InputStreamReader(inputStream)).lines().reduce(String::concat).get();

Here's my Java 8 based solution, which uses the new Stream API to collect all lines from an InputStream:

public static String toString(InputStream inputStream) {
    BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(
        new InputStreamReader(inputStream));
    return reader.lines().collect(Collectors.joining(
        System.getProperty("line.separator")));
}

The below code worked for me.

URL url = MyClass.class.getResource("/" + configFileName);
BufferedInputStream bi = (BufferedInputStream) url.getContent();
byte[] buffer = new byte[bi.available() ];
int bytesRead = bi.read(buffer);
String out = new String(buffer);

Please note, according to Java docs, the available() method might not work with InputStream but always works with BufferedInputStream. In case you don't want to use available() method we can always use the below code

URL url = MyClass.class.getResource("/" + configFileName);
BufferedInputStream bi = (BufferedInputStream) url.getContent();
File f = new File(url.getPath());
byte[] buffer = new byte[ (int) f.length()];
int bytesRead = bi.read(buffer);
String out = new String(buffer);

I am not sure if there will be any encoding issues. Please comment, if there will be any issues with the code.

Well, you can program it for yourself... It's not complicated...

String Inputstream2String (InputStream is) throws IOException
    {
        final int PKG_SIZE = 1024;
        byte[] data = new byte [PKG_SIZE];
        StringBuilder buffer = new StringBuilder(PKG_SIZE * 10);
        int size;

        size = is.read(data, 0, data.length);
        while (size > 0)
        {
            String str = new String(data, 0, size);
            buffer.append(str);
            size = is.read(data, 0, data.length);
        }
        return buffer.toString();
    }

JDK 7/8 answer that closes the stream and still throws an IOException:

StringBuilder build = new StringBuilder();
byte[] buf = new byte[1024];
int length;
try (InputStream is = getInputStream()) {
  while ((length = is.read(buf)) != -1) {
    build.append(new String(buf, 0, length));
  }
}

I have written a class that does just that, so I figured I'd share it with everyone. Sometimes you don't want to add Apache Commons just for one thing, and want something dumber than Scanner that doesn't examine the content.

Usage is as follows

// Read from InputStream
String data = new ReaderSink(inputStream, Charset.forName("UTF-8")).drain();

// Read from File
data = new ReaderSink(file, Charset.forName("UTF-8")).drain();

// Drain input stream to console
new ReaderSink(inputStream, Charset.forName("UTF-8")).drainTo(System.out);

Here is the code for ReaderSink:

import java.io.*;
import java.nio.charset.Charset;

/**
 * A simple sink class that drains a {@link Reader} to a {@link String} or
 * to a {@link Writer}.
 *
 * @author Ben Barkay
 * @version 2/20/2014
 */
public class ReaderSink {
    /**
     * The default buffer size to use if no buffer size was specified.
     */
    public static final int DEFAULT_BUFFER_SIZE = 1024;

    /**
     * The {@link Reader} that will be drained.
     */
    private final Reader in;

    /**
     * Constructs a new {@code ReaderSink} for the specified file and charset.
     * @param file      The file to read from.
     * @param charset   The charset to use.
     * @throws FileNotFoundException    If the file was not found on the filesystem.
     */
    public ReaderSink(File file, Charset charset) throws FileNotFoundException {
        this(new FileInputStream(file), charset);
    }

    /**
     * Constructs a new {@code ReaderSink} for the specified {@link InputStream}.
     * @param in        The {@link InputStream} to drain.
     * @param charset   The charset to use.
     */
    public ReaderSink(InputStream in, Charset charset) {
        this(new InputStreamReader(in, charset));
    }

    /**
     * Constructs a new {@code ReaderSink} for the specified {@link Reader}.
     * @param in    The reader to drain.
     */
    public ReaderSink(Reader in) {
        this.in = in;
    }

    /**
     * Drains the data from the underlying {@link Reader}, returning a {@link String} containing
     * all of the read information. This method will use {@link #DEFAULT_BUFFER_SIZE} for
     * its buffer size.
     * @return  A {@link String} containing all of the information that was read.
     */
    public String drain() throws IOException {
        return drain(DEFAULT_BUFFER_SIZE);
    }

    /**
     * Drains the data from the underlying {@link Reader}, returning a {@link String} containing
     * all of the read information.
     * @param bufferSize    The size of the buffer to use when reading.
     * @return  A {@link String} containing all of the information that was read.
     */
    public String drain(int bufferSize) throws IOException {
        StringWriter stringWriter = new StringWriter();
        drainTo(stringWriter, bufferSize);
        return stringWriter.toString();
    }

    /**
     * Drains the data from the underlying {@link Reader}, writing it to the
     * specified {@link Writer}. This method will use {@link #DEFAULT_BUFFER_SIZE} for
     * its buffer size.
     * @param out   The {@link Writer} to write to.
     */
    public void drainTo(Writer out) throws IOException {
        drainTo(out, DEFAULT_BUFFER_SIZE);
    }

    /**
     * Drains the data from the underlying {@link Reader}, writing it to the
     * specified {@link Writer}.
     * @param out           The {@link Writer} to write to.
     * @param bufferSize    The size of the buffer to use when reader.
     */
    public void drainTo(Writer out, int bufferSize) throws IOException {
        char[] buffer = new char[bufferSize];
        int read;
        while ((read = in.read(buffer)) > -1) {
            out.write(buffer, 0, read);
        }
    }
}

Based on the second part of the accepted Apache Commons answer but with the small gap filled in for always closing the stream:

    String theString;
    try {
        theString = IOUtils.toString(inputStream, encoding);
    } finally {
        IOUtils.closeQuietly(inputStream);
    }

You can use Apache Commons.

In the IOUtils you can find the toString method with three helpful implementations.

public static String toString(InputStream input) throws IOException {
        return toString(input, Charset.defaultCharset());
}

public static String toString(InputStream input) throws IOException {
        return toString(input, Charset.defaultCharset());
}

public static String toString(InputStream input, String encoding)
            throws IOException {
        return toString(input, Charsets.toCharset(encoding));
}

Try these 4 statements..

As per the point recalled by Fred, it is not recommended to append a String with += operator since every time a new char is appended to the existing String creating a new String object again and assigning its address to st while the old st object becomes garbage.

public String convertStreamToString(InputStream is)
{
    int k;
    StringBuffer sb=new StringBuffer();
    while((k=fin.read()) != -1)
    {
        sb.append((char)k);
    }
    return sb.toString();
}

---

Not recommended, but this is also a way

public String convertStreamToString(InputStream is) { 
    int k;
    String st="";
    while((k=is.read()) != -1)
    {
        st+=(char)k;
    }
    return st;
}

InputStream is = Context.openFileInput(someFileName); // whatever format you have

ByteArrayOutputStream bos = new ByteArrayOutputStream();

byte[] b = new byte[8192];
for (int bytesRead; (bytesRead = is.read(b)) != -1;) {
    bos.write(b, 0, bytesRead);
}

String output = bos.toString(someEncoding);

Guava provides much shorter efficient autoclosing solution in case when input stream comes from classpath resource (which seems to be popular task):

byte[] bytes = Resources.toByteArray(classLoader.getResource(path));

or

String text = Resources.toString(classLoader.getResource(path), StandardCharsets.UTF_8);

There is also general concept of ByteSource and CharSource that gently take care of both opening and closing the stream.

So, for example, instead of explicitly opening a small file to read its contents:

String content = Files.asCharSource(new File("robots.txt"), StandardCharsets.UTF_8).read();
byte[] data = Files.asByteSource(new File("favicon.ico")).read();

or just

String content = Files.toString(new File("robots.txt"), StandardCharsets.UTF_8);
byte[] data = Files.toByteArray(new File("favicon.ico"));

In Groovy

inputStream.getText()

Raghu K Nair Was the only one using a scanner. The code I use is a little different:

String convertToString(InputStream in){
    Scanner scanner = new Scanner(in)
    scanner.useDelimiter("\\A");

    boolean hasInput = scanner.hasNext();
    if (hasInput) {
        return scanner.next();
    } else {
        return null;
    }

}

About Delimiters: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/28766377/how-do-i-use-a-delimiter-in-java-scanner

public String read(InputStream in) throws IOException {
    try (BufferedReader buffer = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(in))) {
        return buffer.lines().collect(Collectors.joining("\n"));
    }
}

With Okio:

String result = Okio.buffer(Okio.source(inputStream)).readUtf8();

ISO-8859-1

Here is a very performant way to do this if you know your input stream's encoding is ISO-8859-1 or ASCII. It (1) avoids the unnecessary synchronization present in StringWriter's internal StringBuffer, (2) avoids the overhead of InputStreamReader, and (3) minimizes the number of times StringBuilder's internal char array must be copied.

public static String iso_8859_1(InputStream is) throws IOException {
    StringBuilder chars = new StringBuilder(Math.max(is.available(), 4096));
    byte[] buffer = new byte[4096];
    int n;
    while ((n = is.read(buffer)) != -1) {
        for (int i = 0; i < n; i++) {
            chars.append((char)(buffer[i] & 0xFF));
        }
    }
    return chars.toString();
}

UTF-8

The same general strategy may be used for a stream encoded with UTF-8:

public static String utf8(InputStream is) throws IOException {
    StringBuilder chars = new StringBuilder(Math.max(is.available(), 4096));
    byte[] buffer = new byte[4096];
    int n;
    int state = 0;
    while ((n = is.read(buffer)) != -1) {
        for (int i = 0; i < n; i++) {
            if ((state = nextStateUtf8(state, buffer[i])) >= 0) {
                chars.appendCodePoint(state);
            } else if (state == -1) { //error
                state = 0;
                chars.append('\uFFFD'); //replacement char
            }
        }
    }
    return chars.toString();
}

where the nextStateUtf8() function is defined as follows:

/**
 * Returns the next UTF-8 state given the next byte of input and the current state.
 * If the input byte is the last byte in a valid UTF-8 byte sequence,
 * the returned state will be the corresponding unicode character (in the range of 0 through 0x10FFFF).
 * Otherwise, a negative integer is returned. A state of -1 is returned whenever an
 * invalid UTF-8 byte sequence is detected.
 */
static int nextStateUtf8(int currentState, byte nextByte) {
    switch (currentState & 0xF0000000) {
        case 0:
            if ((nextByte & 0x80) == 0) { //0 trailing bytes (ASCII)
                return nextByte;
            } else if ((nextByte & 0xE0) == 0xC0) { //1 trailing byte
                if (nextByte == (byte) 0xC0 || nextByte == (byte) 0xC1) { //0xCO & 0xC1 are overlong
                    return -1;
                } else {
                    return nextByte & 0xC000001F;
                }
            } else if ((nextByte & 0xF0) == 0xE0) { //2 trailing bytes
                if (nextByte == (byte) 0xE0) { //possibly overlong
                    return nextByte & 0xA000000F;
                } else if (nextByte == (byte) 0xED) { //possibly surrogate
                    return nextByte & 0xB000000F;
                } else {
                    return nextByte & 0x9000000F;
                }
            } else if ((nextByte & 0xFC) == 0xF0) { //3 trailing bytes
                if (nextByte == (byte) 0xF0) { //possibly overlong
                    return nextByte & 0x80000007;
                } else {
                    return nextByte & 0xE0000007;
                }
            } else if (nextByte == (byte) 0xF4) { //3 trailing bytes, possibly undefined
                return nextByte & 0xD0000007;
            } else {
                return -1;
            }
        case 0xE0000000: //3rd-to-last continuation byte
            return (nextByte & 0xC0) == 0x80 ? currentState << 6 | nextByte & 0x9000003F : -1;
        case 0x80000000: //3rd-to-last continuation byte, check overlong
            return (nextByte & 0xE0) == 0xA0 || (nextByte & 0xF0) == 0x90 ? currentState << 6 | nextByte & 0x9000003F : -1;
        case 0xD0000000: //3rd-to-last continuation byte, check undefined
            return (nextByte & 0xF0) == 0x80 ? currentState << 6 | nextByte & 0x9000003F : -1;
        case 0x90000000: //2nd-to-last continuation byte
            return (nextByte & 0xC0) == 0x80 ? currentState << 6 | nextByte & 0xC000003F : -1;
        case 0xA0000000: //2nd-to-last continuation byte, check overlong
            return (nextByte & 0xE0) == 0xA0 ? currentState << 6 | nextByte & 0xC000003F : -1;
        case 0xB0000000: //2nd-to-last continuation byte, check surrogate
            return (nextByte & 0xE0) == 0x80 ? currentState << 6 | nextByte & 0xC000003F : -1;
        case 0xC0000000: //last continuation byte
            return (nextByte & 0xC0) == 0x80 ? currentState << 6 | nextByte & 0x3F : -1;
        default:
            return -1;
    }
}

Auto-Detect Encoding

If your input stream was encoded using either ASCII or ISO-8859-1 or UTF-8, but you're not sure which, we can use a similar method to the last, but with an additional encoding-detection component to auto-detect the encoding before returning the string.

public static String autoDetect(InputStream is) throws IOException {
    StringBuilder chars = new StringBuilder(Math.max(is.available(), 4096));
    byte[] buffer = new byte[4096];
    int n;
    int state = 0;
    boolean ascii = true;
    while ((n = is.read(buffer)) != -1) {
        for (int i = 0; i < n; i++) {
            if ((state = nextStateUtf8(state, buffer[i])) > 0x7F)
                ascii = false;
            chars.append((char)(buffer[i] & 0xFF));
        }
    }

    if (ascii || state < 0) { //probably not UTF-8
        return chars.toString();
    }
    //probably UTF-8
    int pos = 0;
    char[] charBuf = new char[2];
    for (int i = 0, len = chars.length(); i < len; i++) {
        if ((state = nextStateUtf8(state, (byte)chars.charAt(i))) >= 0) {
            boolean hi = Character.toChars(state, charBuf, 0) == 2;
            chars.setCharAt(pos++, charBuf[0]);
            if (hi) {
                chars.setCharAt(pos++, charBuf[1]);
            }
        }
    }
    return chars.substring(0, pos);
}

If your input stream has an encoding that is neither ISO-8859-1 nor ASCII nor UTF-8, then I defer to the other answers already present.

This Code is for New Java Learners:

     private String textDataFromFile;

public String getFromFile(InputStream myInputStream) throws FileNotFoundException, IOException {

      BufferedReader bufferReader = new BufferedReader (new InputStreamReader(myInputStream));
  
       StringBuilder stringBuilder = new StringBuilder();
    
  String eachStringLine;
  
    while((eachStringLine=bufferReader.readLine()) != null){          
        stringBuilder.append(eachStringLine).append("\n");
    }
    
   textDataFromFile = stringBuilder.toString(); 
  
   
                 
  return textDataFromFile;
  
}

InputStreamReader i = new InputStreamReader(s);
BufferedReader str = new BufferedReader(i);
String msg = str.readLine();
System.out.println(msg);

Here s is your InputStream object which will get convert into String

You can use Cactoos:

String text = new TextOf(inputStream).asString();

UTF-8 encoding is the default one. If you need another one:

String text = new TextOf(inputStream, "UTF-16").asString();

I have created this code, and it works. There are no required external plug-ins.

There is a converter String to Stream and Stream to String:

import java.io.ByteArrayInputStream;
import java.io.InputStream;

public class STRINGTOSTREAM {

    public static void main(String[] args)
    {
        String text = "Hello Bhola..!\nMy Name Is Kishan ";

        InputStream strm = new ByteArrayInputStream(text.getBytes());    // Convert String to Stream

        String data = streamTostring(strm);

        System.out.println(data);
    }

    static String streamTostring(InputStream stream)
    {
        String data = "";

        try
        {
            StringBuilder stringbuld = new StringBuilder();
            int i;
            while ((i=stream.read())!=-1)
            {
                stringbuld.append((char)i);
            }
            data = stringbuld.toString();
        }
        catch(Exception e)
        {
            data = "No data Streamed.";
        }
        return data;
    }

if You need to convert the string to a specific character set w/o external libraries then:

public String convertStreamToString(InputStream is) throws IOException {
  try (ByteArrayOutputStream baos = new ByteArrayOutputStream();) {
    is.transferTo(baos);
    return baos.toString(StandardCharsets.UTF_8);
  }
}

The following doesn't address the original question, but rather some of the responses.

Several responses suggest loops of the form

String line = null;
while((line = reader.readLine()) != null) {
  // ...
}

or

for(String line = reader.readLine(); line != null; line = reader.readLine()) {
    // ...
}

The first form pollutes the namespace of the enclosing scope by declaring a variable "read" in the enclosing scope that will not be used for anything outside the for loop. The second form duplicates the readline() call.

Here is a much cleaner way of writing this sort of loop in Java. It turns out that the first clause in a for-loop doesn't require an actual initializer value. This keeps the scope of the variable "line" to within the body of the for loop. Much more elegant! I haven't seen anybody using this form anywhere (I randomly discovered it one day years ago), but I use it all the time.

for (String line; (line = reader.readLine()) != null; ) {
    //...
}

This solution to this question is not the simplest, but since NIO streams and channels have not been mentioned, here goes a version which uses NIO channels and a ByteBuffer to convert a stream into a string.

public static String streamToStringChannel(InputStream in, String encoding, int bufSize) throws IOException {
    ReadableByteChannel channel = Channels.newChannel(in);
    ByteBuffer byteBuffer = ByteBuffer.allocate(bufSize);
    ByteArrayOutputStream bout = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
    WritableByteChannel outChannel = Channels.newChannel(bout);
    while (channel.read(byteBuffer) > 0 || byteBuffer.position() > 0) {
        byteBuffer.flip();  //make buffer ready for write
        outChannel.write(byteBuffer);
        byteBuffer.compact(); //make buffer ready for reading
    }
    channel.close();
    outChannel.close();
    return bout.toString(encoding);
}

Here is an example how to use it:

try (InputStream in = new FileInputStream("/tmp/large_file.xml")) {
    String x = streamToStringChannel(in, "UTF-8", 1);
    System.out.println(x);
}

The performance of this method should be good for large files.

This snippet was found in \sdk\samples\android-19\connectivity\NetworkConnect\NetworkConnectSample\src\main\java\com\example\android\networkconnect\MainActivity.java which is licensed under Apache License, Version 2.0 and written by Google.

/** Reads an InputStream and converts it to a String.
 * @param stream InputStream containing HTML from targeted site.
 * @param len Length of string that this method returns.
 * @return String concatenated according to len parameter.
 * @throws java.io.IOException
 * @throws java.io.UnsupportedEncodingException
 */
private String readIt(InputStream stream, int len) throws IOException, UnsupportedEncodingException {
    Reader reader = null;
    reader = new InputStreamReader(stream, "UTF-8");
    char[] buffer = new char[len];
    reader.read(buffer);
    return new String(buffer);
}

Method to convert inputStream to String

public static String getStringFromInputStream(InputStream inputStream) {

	BufferedReader bufferedReader = null;
	StringBuilder stringBuilder = new StringBuilder();
	String line;

	try {
		bufferedReader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(
				inputStream));
		while ((line = bufferedReader.readLine()) != null) {
			stringBuilder.append(line);
		}
	} catch (IOException e) {
		logger.error(e.getMessage());
	} finally {
		if (bufferedReader != null) {
			try {
				bufferedReader.close();
			} catch (IOException e) {
				logger.error(e.getMessage());
			}
		}
	}
	return stringBuilder.toString();
}

InputStream  inputStream = null;
BufferedReader bufferedReader = null;
try {
    BufferedReader bufferedReader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(inputStream));
    String stringBuilder = new StringBuilder();
    String content;
    while((content = bufferedReader.readLine()) != null){
    	stringBuilder.append(content);
    }
    System.out.println("content of file::" + stringBuilder.toString());
}
catch (IOException e) {
			e.printStackTrace();
		}finally{			
			if(bufferedReader != null){
				try{
                    bufferedReader.close();
                }catch(IoException ex){
                   ex.printStackTrace();
			}

Also you can get InputStream from a specified resource path:

public static InputStream getResourceAsStream(String path)
{
    InputStream myiInputStream = ClassName.class.getResourceAsStream(path);
    if (null == myiInputStream)
    {
        mylogger.info("Can't find path = ", path);
    }

    return myiInputStream;
}

To get InputStream from a specific path:

public static URL getResource(String path)
{
    URL myURL = ClassName.class.getResource(path);
    if (null == myURL)
    {
        mylogger.info("Can't find resource path = ", path);
    }
    return myURL;
}

I suggest the StringWriter class for that problem.

StringWriter wt= new StringWriter();
IOUtils.copy(inputStream, wt, encoding);
String st= wt.toString();

If you're using AWS SDK v2, call IoUtils.toUtf8String():

public String convertStreamToString(InputStream is) {
    return IoUtils.toUtf8String(is);
}

I had log4j available, so I was able to use the org.apache.log4j.lf5.util.StreamUtils.getBytes to get the bytes, which I was able to convert into a string using the String ctor

String result = new String(StreamUtils.getBytes(inputStream));

Dont want anyone to waste time on reading such structured response

Just showing signature of get api method
getMyData(KeyValueObject<String, List<String>> input){} which returns List<KeyValueObject<String, String>>
where KVO is like this

public class KeyValueObject<T, K> {
  private T key;
  private K value;
}

to make a call from another api and reading response 

Response response = ClientBuilder.newClient()
					.target("https:/something")
					.request(MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON)
.put(Entity.json(new KeyValueObject<>()));

			if (response != null && response.getStatus() == 200) {
				@SuppressWarnings("unchecked")
				KeyValueObject<String, String>[] output= response.readEntity(KeyValueObject[].class);
				
			}

easiest way, one liner

 public static void main(String... args) throws IOException {
        System.out.println(new String(Files.readAllBytes(Paths.get("csv.txt"))));
    }

  InputStream IS=new URL("http://www.petrol.si/api/gas_prices.json").openStream();   
     
  ByteArrayOutputStream BAOS=new ByteArrayOutputStream();
  IOUtils.copy(IS, BAOS);
  String d= new String(BAOS.toByteArray(),"UTF-8");           
    
System.out.println(d);

Note: This probably isn't a good idea. This method uses recursion and thus will hit a StackOverflowError very quickly:

public String read (InputStream is) {
    byte next = is.read();
    return next == -1 ? "" : next + read(is); // Recursive part: reads next byte recursively
}

Quick and easy:

String result = (String)new ObjectInputStream( inputStream ).readObject();