Question

I have a file that is created using

var recordIntent = new Intent(MediaStore.Audio.Media.RecordSoundAction);

I have no problems retrieving the URI of this file. And I can play it back using MediaPlayer without any difficulties.

However, I would like to send this as a response to my webAPI, and am looking at a way to convert the Audio File represented by this URI to a byte array that I can convert to JSON.

With an image file i can do something like

Bitmap bitmap = MediaStore.Images.Media.GetBitmap(ContentResolver, responseUri);
bitmap.Compress(Bitmap.CompressFormat.Png, 0, stream);
byte[] bitmapData = stream.ToArray();

Is there a similar way I can retrieve the Byte Array data from my audio URI?

edit:
formatting of Audio URI.
responseUri = {content://media/external/audio/media/21}

Answer 1

Taken from a ton of different SO answers, and a little bit of extra conversion for mono from Java I came up with these results.

    public String GetRealPathFromUri(Uri contentUri){
        String[] proj = {MediaStore.Audio.AudioColumns.Data};
        ICursor cursor = ManagedQuery(contentUri, proj, null, null, null);
        int column_index = cursor.GetColumnIndex(MediaStore.Audio.AudioColumns.Data);
        cursor.MoveToFirst();
        return cursor.GetString(column_index);
    }

var responseRealPath = GetRealPathFromUri(responseUri);
var getBytes = System.IO.File.ReadAllBytes(responseRealPath);
var responseBase = Convert.ToBase64String(getBytes);