I have binary data in a file that I can read into a byte array and process with no problem. Now I need to send parts of the data over a network connection as elements in an XML document. My problem is that when I convert the data from an array of bytes to a String and back to an array of bytes, the data is getting corrupted. I’ve tested this on one machine to isolate the problem to the String conversion, so I now know that it isn’t getting corrupted by the XML parser or the network transport.
What I’ve got right now is
byte[] buffer = ...; // read from file // a few lines that prove I can process the data successfully String element = new String(buffer); byte[] newBuffer = element.getBytes(); // a few lines that try to process newBuffer and fail because it is not the same data anymore Does anyone know how to convert binary to String and back without data loss?
Answered: Thanks Sam. I feel like an idiot. I had this answered yesterday because my SAX parser was complaining. For some reason when I ran into this seemingly separate issue, it didn’t occur to me that it was a new symptom of the same problem.
EDIT: Just for the sake of completeness, I used the Base64 class from the Apache Commons Codec package to solve this problem.
If you encode it in base64, this will turn any data into ascii safe text, but base64 encoded data is larger than the orignal data