1. Overview
In this quick tutorial, we’re going to show how to convert a File to an InputStream — first using plain Java and then Guava and the Apache Commons IO library.
This article is part of the Java – Back to Basics series here on Baeldung.
2. Convert Using Java
*We can use the IO package of Java to convert a File to different InputStreams.*
2.1. FileInputStream
Let’s start with the first and simplest one — using a FileInputStream:
@Test
public void givenUsingPlainJava_whenConvertingFileToInputStream_thenCorrect()
throws IOException {
File initialFile = new File("src/main/resources/sample.txt");
InputStream targetStream = new FileInputStream(initialFile);
}
2.2. DataInputStream
Let’s look at another method, where we can use DataInputStream to read binary or primitive data from a file:
@Test
public final void givenUsingPlainJava_whenConvertingFileToDataInputStream_thenCorrect()
throws IOException {
final File initialFile = new File("src/test/resources/sample.txt");
final InputStream targetStream =
new DataInputStream(new FileInputStream(initialFile));
}
2.3. SequenceInputStream
Finally, let’s also look at how to use SequenceInputStream to concatenate the input stream of two files to a single InputStream:
@Test
public final void givenUsingPlainJava_whenConvertingFileToSequenceInputStream_thenCorrect()
throws IOException {
final File initialFile = new File("src/test/resources/sample.txt");
final File anotherFile = new File("src/test/resources/anothersample.txt");
final InputStream targetStream = new FileInputStream(initialFile);
final InputStream anotherTargetStream = new FileInputStream(anotherFile);
InputStream sequenceTargetStream =
new SequenceInputStream(targetStream, anotherTargetStream);
}
Note that we’re not closing the resulting stream in these examples for legibility.
3. Convert Using Guava
Next, let’s see the Guava solution, using an intermediary ByteSource:
@Test
public void givenUsingGuava_whenConvertingFileToInputStream_thenCorrect()
throws IOException {
File initialFile = new File("src/main/resources/sample.txt");
InputStream targetStream = Files.asByteSource(initialFile).openStream();
}
4. Convert Using Commons IO
Finally, let’s look at a solution using Apache Commons IO:
@Test
public void givenUsingCommonsIO_whenConvertingFileToInputStream_thenCorrect()
throws IOException {
File initialFile = new File("src/main/resources/sample.txt");
InputStream targetStream = FileUtils.openInputStream(initialFile);
}
And there we have it. Three simple and clean solutions for opening a stream from a Java file.
5. Conclusion
In this article, we explored various ways to convert a File to InputStream by using different libraries.
The implementation of all these examples and code snippets can be found over on GitHub. This is a Maven-based project, so it should be easy to import and run as it is.