How do I convert InputStream to String?

This example will show you how to convert an InputStream into String. In the code snippet below we read a data.txt file, could be from common directory or from inside a jar file.

package org.kodejava.io;

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

public class StreamToString {

    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        StreamToString demo = new StreamToString();

        // Get input stream of our data file. This file can be in
        // the root of your application folder or inside a jar file
        // if the program is packed as a jar.
        InputStream is = demo.getClass().getResourceAsStream("/student.csv");

        // Call the method to convert the stream to string
        System.out.println(demo.convertStreamToString(is));
    }

    private String convertStreamToString(InputStream stream) throws IOException {
        // To convert the InputStream to String we use the
        // Reader.read(char[] buffer) method. We iterate until the
        // Reader return -1 which means there's no more data to
        // read. We use the StringWriter class to produce the string.
        if (stream != null) {
            Writer writer = new StringWriter();

            char[] buffer = new char[1024];
            try (stream) {
                Reader reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(stream,
                        StandardCharsets.UTF_8));
                int length;
                while ((length = reader.read(buffer)) != -1) {
                    writer.write(buffer, 0, length);
                }
            }
            return writer.toString();
        }
        return "";
    }
}

How do I create and write data into text file?

Here is a code example for creating text file and put some texts in it. This program will create a file called write.txt. To create and write a text file we do the following steps:

File file = new File("write.txt");
FileWriter fileWriter = new FileWriter(file);
BufferedWriter bufferedWriter = new BufferedWriter(fileWriter);

Below is the complete code snippet:

package org.kodejava.io;

import java.io.*;

public class WriteTextFileExample {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        File file = new File("write.txt");

        try (Writer writer = new BufferedWriter(new FileWriter(file))) {
            String contents = "The quick brown fox" + 
                System.getProperty("line.separator") + "jumps over the lazy dog.";

            writer.write(contents);
        } catch (IOException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
}

To read a text file see the following example: How do I read a text file using BufferedReader?.