With this example we are going to demonstrate how to convert between ByteBuffers and byte arrays. In short, to make a conversion between a ByteBuffer and a byte array you should:
- Create a byte array and wrap it into a ByteBuffer. The buffer’s capacity and limit will be the array’s length and its position will be zero.
- Retrieve the bytes between the current position and the limit of the buffer. The new byte array’s length is set to the number of remaining elements in the buffer, using the
remaining()API method and then the bytes are transfered from the buffer to the byte array, using theget(byte[] dst, int offset, int length)API method. - Retrieve all bytes in the buffer. First the buffer position is set to 0 and the buffer limit is set to its capacity, with the
clear()API method, then the new byte array’s length is set to the buffer’s capacity and then again theget(byte[] dst, int offset, int length)API method transfers bytes from the buffer into the array.
Let’s take a look at the code snippet that follows.
// Create a byte array byte[] bytes = new byte[10]; // Wrap a byte array into a buffer ByteBuffer buf = ByteBuffer.wrap(bytes); // Retrieve bytes between the position and limit // (see Putting Bytes into a ByteBuffer) bytes = new byte[buf.remaining()]; // transfer bytes from this buffer into the given destination array buf.get(bytes, 0, bytes.length); // Retrieve all bytes in the buffer buf.clear(); bytes = new byte[buf.capacity()]; // transfer bytes from this buffer into the given destination array buf.get(bytes, 0, bytes.length);
This was an example of how to convert between a ByteBuffer and a byte array in Java.
