Java – String getBytes() method

July 26, 2016 SJ String Handling 1

In this article, we will discuss couple of variant methods of String to convert/encode the string into equivalent byte array

1. String’s getBytes() method:

  • This String method is used to convert or encode into sequence of bytes using either JVM’s default charset or named charset
  • Note: There are 4 variants or overloaded getBytes() methods & one of them is deprecated

1.1 Method Signature:

public byte[] getBytes();

public byte[] getBytes(Charset charset);

public byte[] getBytes(String charsetName) throws UnsupportedEncodingException;

@deprecated
public void getBytes(int srcBegin, int srcEnd, byte dst[], int dstBegin);

1.2 Returns:

  • Returns a sequence of bytes or byte array

1.3 Throws:

  • UnsupportedCodingException: If the charset name passed is invalid or not supported

2. Examples on getBytes() method:

  • Demo Java program to convert string into byte array

StringGetBytesMethod.java

package in.bench.resources.string.methods;

import java.io.UnsupportedEncodingException;
import java.nio.charset.Charset;
import java.util.Arrays;

public class StringGetBytesMethod {

	public static void main(String[] args) {

		String str1 = "Universe";

		// default platform-specific charset name
		byte[] bArrray1 = str1.getBytes();

		// static method of charset
		byte[] bArrray2 = str1.getBytes(
				Charset.forName("UTF-16"));

		// charset name passed as string argument
		byte[] bArrray3 = null;
		try {
			bArrray3 = str1.getBytes("UTF-16BE");
		} catch (UnsupportedEncodingException useex) {
			useex.printStackTrace();
		}

		// Printing to console
		System.out.println("Default charset of platform : \n"
				+ Arrays.toString(bArrray1));
		System.out.println("\nStatic method of charset : \n"
				+ Arrays.toString(bArrray2));
		System.out.println("\nPassed UTF-16BE charset name : \n"
				+ Arrays.toString(bArrray3));
	}
}

Output:

Default charset of platform :
[85, 110, 105, 118, 101, 114, 115, 101]

Static method of charset :
[-2, -1, 0, 85, 0, 110, 0, 105, 0, 118, 0, 101, 0,
114, 0, 115, 0, 101]

Passed UTF-16BE charset name :
[0, 85, 0, 110, 0, 105, 0, 118, 0, 101, 0, 114, 0, 115, 0, 101]

Related Articles:

References:

Happy Coding !!
Happy Learning !!

Java - String getChars() method
Java - String format(String format, Object… args) method

Related posts:

  1. Java – String to Byte conversion in 3 ways
  2. Java – String to Byte[] Arrays conversion
  3. Java – String class with example
  4. Java – String contains(CharSequence s) method with example