How do I convert an InputStream to a String in Java?

Question

Suppose I have an InputStream that contains text data, and I want to convert this to a String (for example, so I can write the contents of the stream to a log file).

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

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

Answer 1

This is my version,

public static String readString(InputStream inputStream) throws IOException {

    ByteArrayOutputStream into = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
    byte[] buf = new byte[4096];
    for (int n; 0 < (n = inputStream.read(buf));) {
        into.write(buf, 0, n);
    }
    into.close();
    return new String(into.toByteArray(), "UTF-8"); // Or whatever encoding
}