Java- Output not printing

Question

I'm trying to convert an image file to Base64 string using BufferedImage class. Even though the code is not giving any compilation/run time errors the output is not getting printed in the console.

Eclipse IDE code:

public class BufferImage {

public static void main(String args[]) {
try 
{
    BufferedImage img = null;
    img = ImageIO.read(new File("image.jpg")); // eventually C:\\ImageTest\\pic2.jpg
    String image_string = encodeToString(img, "string");
    System.out.println(image_string);
} 
catch (IOException e) 
{
    e.printStackTrace();
}
}

public static String encodeToString(BufferedImage image, String type) 
{
    String base64String = null;
    ByteArrayOutputStream bos = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
    try {
    ImageIO.write(image, type, bos);
    byte[] imageBytes = bos.toByteArray();
    BASE64Encoder encoder = new BASE64Encoder();
    base64String = encoder.encode(imageBytes);
    bos.close();
    } catch (IOException e) {
    e.printStackTrace();
    }
    return base64String;
    }
}

How to overcome this?

Answer 1

The problem lies in ImageIO.write(image, type, bos);. In your case type is "String", but that is most likely not a valid format. To see all the formats at your disposal execute ImageIO.getReaderFormatNames().

If you can use Apache Commons, I suggest you try the following to encode your file to Base64: (fileImage is of type File):

byte[] imageBytes = Base64.encode(FileUtils.readFileToByteArray(fileImage)); 
String base64String = new String(imageBytes);