Java: PrintStream to String?
I have a function that takes an object of a certain type, and a PrintStream
to which to print, and outputs a representation of that object. How can I capture this function's output in a String? Specifically, I want to use it as in a toString
method.
Use a ByteArrayOutputStream
as a buffer:
import java.io.ByteArrayOutputStream;
import java.io.PrintStream;
import java.nio.charset.StandardCharsets;
final ByteArrayOutputStream baos = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
final String utf8 = StandardCharsets.UTF_8.name();
try (PrintStream ps = new PrintStream(baos, true, utf8)) {
yourFunction(object, ps);
}
String data = baos.toString(utf8);
You can construct a PrintStream with a ByteArrayOutputStream passed into the constructor which you can later use to grab the text written to the PrintStream.
ByteArrayOutputStream os = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
PrintStream ps = new PrintStream(os);
...
String output = os.toString("UTF8");
Why don't you use a StringWriter with a PrintWriter?
StringWriter writer = new StringWriter();
PrintWriter out = new PrintWriter(writer);
out.println("Hello World!");
String output = writer.toString();
A unification of previous answers, this answer works with Java 1.7 and after. Also, I added code to close the Streams.
final Charset charset = StandardCharsets.UTF_8;
ByteArrayOutputStream baos = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
PrintStream ps = new PrintStream(baos, true, charset.name());
yourFunction(object, ps);
String content = new String(baos.toByteArray(), charset);
ps.close();
baos.close();