How to get a MemoryStream from a Stream in .NET?

In .NET 4, you can use Stream.CopyTo to copy a stream, instead of the home-brew methods listed in the other answers.

MemoryStream _ms;

public MyClass(Stream sourceStream)

    _ms = new MemoryStream();
    sourceStream.CopyTo(_ms);
}

Use this:

var memoryStream = new MemoryStream();
stream.CopyTo(memoryStream);

This will convert Stream to MemoryStream.


If you're modifying your class to accept a Stream instead of a filename, don't bother converting to a MemoryStream. Let the underlying Stream handle the operations:

public class MyClass
{ 
    Stream _s;

    public MyClass(Stream s) { _s = s; }
}

But if you really need a MemoryStream for internal operations, you'll have to copy the data out of the source Stream into the MemoryStream:

public MyClass(Stream stream)
{
    _ms = new MemoryStream();
    CopyStream(stream, _ms);
}

// Merged From linked CopyStream below and Jon Skeet's ReadFully example
public static void CopyStream(Stream input, Stream output)
{
    byte[] buffer = new byte[16*1024];
    int read;
    while((read = input.Read (buffer, 0, buffer.Length)) > 0)
    {
        output.Write (buffer, 0, read);
    }
}