JDK 7/8 answer that closes the stream and still throws an IOException:

StringBuilder build = new StringBuilder();
byte[] buf = new byte[1024];
int length;
try (InputStream is = getInputStream()) {
  while ((length = is.read(buf)) != -1) {
    build.append(new String(buf, 0, length));
  }
}

The below code worked for me.

URL url = MyClass.class.getResource("/" + configFileName);
BufferedInputStream bi = (BufferedInputStream) url.getContent();
byte[] buffer = new byte[bi.available() ];
int bytesRead = bi.read(buffer);
String out = new String(buffer);

Please note, according to Java docs, the available() method might not work with InputStream but always works with BufferedInputStream. In case you don't want to use available() method we can always use the below code

URL url = MyClass.class.getResource("/" + configFileName);
BufferedInputStream bi = (BufferedInputStream) url.getContent();
File f = new File(url.getPath());
byte[] buffer = new byte[ (int) f.length()];
int bytesRead = bi.read(buffer);
String out = new String(buffer);

I am not sure if there will be any encoding issues. Please comment, if there will be any issues with the code.

Based on the second part of the accepted Apache Commons answer but with the small gap filled in for always closing the stream:

    String theString;
    try {
        theString = IOUtils.toString(inputStream, encoding);
    } finally {
        IOUtils.closeQuietly(inputStream);
    }

This code is for new Java learners:

private String textDataFromFile;

public String getFromFile(InputStream myInputStream) throws FileNotFoundException, IOException {

    BufferedReader bufferReader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(myInputStream));

    StringBuilder stringBuilder = new StringBuilder();

    String eachStringLine;

    while ((eachStringLine = bufferReader.readLine()) != null) {
        stringBuilder.append(eachStringLine).append("\n");
    }
    textDataFromFile = stringBuilder.toString();

    return textDataFromFile;
}

I have written a class that does just that. Sometimes you don't want to add Apache Commons just for one thing, and want something dumber than Scanner that doesn't examine the content.

Usage is as follows

// Read from InputStream
String data = new ReaderSink(inputStream, Charset.forName("UTF-8")).drain();

// Read from File
data = new ReaderSink(file, Charset.forName("UTF-8")).drain();

// Drain input stream to console
new ReaderSink(inputStream, Charset.forName("UTF-8")).drainTo(System.out);

Here is the code for ReaderSink:

import java.io.*;
import java.nio.charset.Charset;

/**
 * A simple sink class that drains a {@link Reader} to a {@link String} or
 * to a {@link Writer}.
 *
 * @author Ben Barkay
 * @version 2/20/2014
 */
public class ReaderSink {
    /**
     * The default buffer size to use if no buffer size was specified.
     */
    public static final int DEFAULT_BUFFER_SIZE = 1024;

    /**
     * The {@link Reader} that will be drained.
     */
    private final Reader in;

    /**
     * Constructs a new {@code ReaderSink} for the specified file and charset.
     * @param file      The file to read from.
     * @param charset   The charset to use.
     * @throws FileNotFoundException    If the file was not found on the filesystem.
     */
    public ReaderSink(File file, Charset charset) throws FileNotFoundException {
        this(new FileInputStream(file), charset);
    }

    /**
     * Constructs a new {@code ReaderSink} for the specified {@link InputStream}.
     * @param in        The {@link InputStream} to drain.
     * @param charset   The charset to use.
     */
    public ReaderSink(InputStream in, Charset charset) {
        this(new InputStreamReader(in, charset));
    }

    /**
     * Constructs a new {@code ReaderSink} for the specified {@link Reader}.
     * @param in    The reader to drain.
     */
    public ReaderSink(Reader in) {
        this.in = in;
    }

    /**
     * Drains the data from the underlying {@link Reader}, returning a {@link String} containing
     * all of the read information. This method will use {@link #DEFAULT_BUFFER_SIZE} for
     * its buffer size.
     * @return  A {@link String} containing all of the information that was read.
     */
    public String drain() throws IOException {
        return drain(DEFAULT_BUFFER_SIZE);
    }

    /**
     * Drains the data from the underlying {@link Reader}, returning a {@link String} containing
     * all of the read information.
     * @param bufferSize    The size of the buffer to use when reading.
     * @return  A {@link String} containing all of the information that was read.
     */
    public String drain(int bufferSize) throws IOException {
        StringWriter stringWriter = new StringWriter();
        drainTo(stringWriter, bufferSize);
        return stringWriter.toString();
    }

    /**
     * Drains the data from the underlying {@link Reader}, writing it to the
     * specified {@link Writer}. This method will use {@link #DEFAULT_BUFFER_SIZE} for
     * its buffer size.
     * @param out   The {@link Writer} to write to.
     */
    public void drainTo(Writer out) throws IOException {
        drainTo(out, DEFAULT_BUFFER_SIZE);
    }

    /**
     * Drains the data from the underlying {@link Reader}, writing it to the
     * specified {@link Writer}.
     * @param out           The {@link Writer} to write to.
     * @param bufferSize    The size of the buffer to use when reader.
     */
    public void drainTo(Writer out, int bufferSize) throws IOException {
        char[] buffer = new char[bufferSize];
        int read;
        while ((read = in.read(buffer)) > -1) {
            out.write(buffer, 0, read);
        }
    }
}

Guava provides much shorter efficient autoclosing solution in case when input stream comes from classpath resource (which seems to be popular task):

byte[] bytes = Resources.toByteArray(classLoader.getResource(path));

or

String text = Resources.toString(classLoader.getResource(path), StandardCharsets.UTF_8);

There is also general concept of ByteSource and CharSource that gently take care of both opening and closing the stream.

So, for example, instead of explicitly opening a small file to read its contents:

String content = Files.asCharSource(new File("robots.txt"), StandardCharsets.UTF_8).read();
byte[] data = Files.asByteSource(new File("favicon.ico")).read();

or just

String content = Files.toString(new File("robots.txt"), StandardCharsets.UTF_8);
byte[] data = Files.toByteArray(new File("favicon.ico"));

Try these 4 statements..

As per the point recalled by Fred, it is not recommended to append a String with += operator since every time a new char is appended to the existing String creating a new String object again and assigning its address to st while the old st object becomes garbage.

public String convertStreamToString(InputStream is)
{
    int k;
    StringBuffer sb=new StringBuffer();
    while((k=fin.read()) != -1)
    {
        sb.append((char)k);
    }
    return sb.toString();
}

Not recommended, but this is also a way

public String convertStreamToString(InputStream is) { 
    int k;
    String st="";
    while((k=is.read()) != -1)
    {
        st+=(char)k;
    }
    return st;
}

InputStream is = Context.openFileInput(someFileName); // whatever format you have

ByteArrayOutputStream bos = new ByteArrayOutputStream();

byte[] b = new byte[8192];
for (int bytesRead; (bytesRead = is.read(b)) != -1;) {
    bos.write(b, 0, bytesRead);
}

String output = bos.toString(someEncoding);

Raghu K Nair Was the only one using a scanner. The code I use is a little different:

String convertToString(InputStream in){
    Scanner scanner = new Scanner(in)
    scanner.useDelimiter("\\A");

    boolean hasInput = scanner.hasNext();
    if (hasInput) {
        return scanner.next();
    } else {
        return null;
    }

}

About Delimiters: How do I use a delimiter in Java Scanner?

In Groovy

inputStream.getText()

Well, you can program it for yourself... It's not complicated...

String Inputstream2String (InputStream is) throws IOException
    {
        final int PKG_SIZE = 1024;
        byte[] data = new byte [PKG_SIZE];
        StringBuilder buffer = new StringBuilder(PKG_SIZE * 10);
        int size;

        size = is.read(data, 0, data.length);
        while (size > 0)
        {
            String str = new String(data, 0, size);
            buffer.append(str);
            size = is.read(data, 0, data.length);
        }
        return buffer.toString();
    }

With Okio:

String result = Okio.buffer(Okio.source(inputStream)).readUtf8();

You can use Apache Commons.

In the IOUtils you can find the toString method with three helpful implementations.

public static String toString(InputStream input) throws IOException {
        return toString(input, Charset.defaultCharset());
}

public static String toString(InputStream input) throws IOException {
        return toString(input, Charset.defaultCharset());
}

public static String toString(InputStream input, String encoding)
            throws IOException {
        return toString(input, Charsets.toCharset(encoding));
}

public String read(InputStream in) throws IOException {
    try (BufferedReader buffer = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(in))) {
        return buffer.lines().collect(Collectors.joining("\n"));
    }
}

ISO-8859-1

Here is a very performant way to do this if you know your input stream's encoding is ISO-8859-1 or ASCII. It (1) avoids the unnecessary synchronization present in StringWriter's internal StringBuffer, (2) avoids the overhead of InputStreamReader, and (3) minimizes the number of times StringBuilder's internal char array must be copied.

public static String iso_8859_1(InputStream is) throws IOException {
    StringBuilder chars = new StringBuilder(Math.max(is.available(), 4096));
    byte[] buffer = new byte[4096];
    int n;
    while ((n = is.read(buffer)) != -1) {
        for (int i = 0; i < n; i++) {
            chars.append((char)(buffer[i] & 0xFF));
        }
    }
    return chars.toString();
}

UTF-8

The same general strategy may be used for a stream encoded with UTF-8:

public static String utf8(InputStream is) throws IOException {
    StringBuilder chars = new StringBuilder(Math.max(is.available(), 4096));
    byte[] buffer = new byte[4096];
    int n;
    int state = 0;
    while ((n = is.read(buffer)) != -1) {
        for (int i = 0; i < n; i++) {
            if ((state = nextStateUtf8(state, buffer[i])) >= 0) {
                chars.appendCodePoint(state);
            } else if (state == -1) { //error
                state = 0;
                chars.append('\uFFFD'); //replacement char
            }
        }
    }
    return chars.toString();
}

where the nextStateUtf8() function is defined as follows:

/**
 * Returns the next UTF-8 state given the next byte of input and the current state.
 * If the input byte is the last byte in a valid UTF-8 byte sequence,
 * the returned state will be the corresponding unicode character (in the range of 0 through 0x10FFFF).
 * Otherwise, a negative integer is returned. A state of -1 is returned whenever an
 * invalid UTF-8 byte sequence is detected.
 */
static int nextStateUtf8(int currentState, byte nextByte) {
    switch (currentState & 0xF0000000) {
        case 0:
            if ((nextByte & 0x80) == 0) { //0 trailing bytes (ASCII)
                return nextByte;
            } else if ((nextByte & 0xE0) == 0xC0) { //1 trailing byte
                if (nextByte == (byte) 0xC0 || nextByte == (byte) 0xC1) { //0xCO & 0xC1 are overlong
                    return -1;
                } else {
                    return nextByte & 0xC000001F;
                }
            } else if ((nextByte & 0xF0) == 0xE0) { //2 trailing bytes
                if (nextByte == (byte) 0xE0) { //possibly overlong
                    return nextByte & 0xA000000F;
                } else if (nextByte == (byte) 0xED) { //possibly surrogate
                    return nextByte & 0xB000000F;
                } else {
                    return nextByte & 0x9000000F;
                }
            } else if ((nextByte & 0xFC) == 0xF0) { //3 trailing bytes
                if (nextByte == (byte) 0xF0) { //possibly overlong
                    return nextByte & 0x80000007;
                } else {
                    return nextByte & 0xE0000007;
                }
            } else if (nextByte == (byte) 0xF4) { //3 trailing bytes, possibly undefined
                return nextByte & 0xD0000007;
            } else {
                return -1;
            }
        case 0xE0000000: //3rd-to-last continuation byte
            return (nextByte & 0xC0) == 0x80 ? currentState << 6 | nextByte & 0x9000003F : -1;
        case 0x80000000: //3rd-to-last continuation byte, check overlong
            return (nextByte & 0xE0) == 0xA0 || (nextByte & 0xF0) == 0x90 ? currentState << 6 | nextByte & 0x9000003F : -1;
        case 0xD0000000: //3rd-to-last continuation byte, check undefined
            return (nextByte & 0xF0) == 0x80 ? currentState << 6 | nextByte & 0x9000003F : -1;
        case 0x90000000: //2nd-to-last continuation byte
            return (nextByte & 0xC0) == 0x80 ? currentState << 6 | nextByte & 0xC000003F : -1;
        case 0xA0000000: //2nd-to-last continuation byte, check overlong
            return (nextByte & 0xE0) == 0xA0 ? currentState << 6 | nextByte & 0xC000003F : -1;
        case 0xB0000000: //2nd-to-last continuation byte, check surrogate
            return (nextByte & 0xE0) == 0x80 ? currentState << 6 | nextByte & 0xC000003F : -1;
        case 0xC0000000: //last continuation byte
            return (nextByte & 0xC0) == 0x80 ? currentState << 6 | nextByte & 0x3F : -1;
        default:
            return -1;
    }
}

Auto-Detect Encoding

If your input stream was encoded using either ASCII or ISO-8859-1 or UTF-8, but you're not sure which, we can use a similar method to the last, but with an additional encoding-detection component to auto-detect the encoding before returning the string.

public static String autoDetect(InputStream is) throws IOException {
    StringBuilder chars = new StringBuilder(Math.max(is.available(), 4096));
    byte[] buffer = new byte[4096];
    int n;
    int state = 0;
    boolean ascii = true;
    while ((n = is.read(buffer)) != -1) {
        for (int i = 0; i < n; i++) {
            if ((state = nextStateUtf8(state, buffer[i])) > 0x7F)
                ascii = false;
            chars.append((char)(buffer[i] & 0xFF));
        }
    }

    if (ascii || state < 0) { //probably not UTF-8
        return chars.toString();
    }
    //probably UTF-8
    int pos = 0;
    char[] charBuf = new char[2];
    for (int i = 0, len = chars.length(); i < len; i++) {
        if ((state = nextStateUtf8(state, (byte)chars.charAt(i))) >= 0) {
            boolean hi = Character.toChars(state, charBuf, 0) == 2;
            chars.setCharAt(pos++, charBuf[0]);
            if (hi) {
                chars.setCharAt(pos++, charBuf[1]);
            }
        }
    }
    return chars.substring(0, pos);
}

If your input stream has an encoding that is neither ISO-8859-1 nor ASCII nor UTF-8, then I defer to the other answers already present.

If you need to convert the string to a specific character set without external libraries then:

public String convertStreamToString(InputStream is) throws IOException {
  try (ByteArrayOutputStream baos = new ByteArrayOutputStream();) {
    is.transferTo(baos);
    return baos.toString(StandardCharsets.UTF_8);
  }
}

In Java 8 user lines() which return string on that we can perform collect(Collectors.joining())

Actual code is as below.

new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(System.in)).lines().collect(Collectors.joining());

InputStreamReader i = new InputStreamReader(s);
BufferedReader str = new BufferedReader(i);
String msg = str.readLine();
System.out.println(msg);

Here s is your InputStream object which will get convert into String

You can use Cactoos:

String text = new TextOf(inputStream).asString();

UTF-8 encoding is the default one. If you need another one:

String text = new TextOf(inputStream, "UTF-16").asString();

I have created this code, and it works. There are no required external plug-ins.

There is a converter String to Stream and Stream to String:

import java.io.ByteArrayInputStream;
import java.io.InputStream;

public class STRINGTOSTREAM {

    public static void main(String[] args)
    {
        String text = "Hello Bhola..!\nMy Name Is Kishan ";

        InputStream strm = new ByteArrayInputStream(text.getBytes());    // Convert String to Stream

        String data = streamTostring(strm);

        System.out.println(data);
    }

    static String streamTostring(InputStream stream)
    {
        String data = "";

        try
        {
            StringBuilder stringbuld = new StringBuilder();
            int i;
            while ((i=stream.read())!=-1)
            {
                stringbuld.append((char)i);
            }
            data = stringbuld.toString();
        }
        catch(Exception e)
        {
            data = "No data Streamed.";
        }
        return data;
    }

InputStream  inputStream = null;
BufferedReader bufferedReader = null;
try {
    BufferedReader bufferedReader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(inputStream));
    String stringBuilder = new StringBuilder();
    String content;
    while((content = bufferedReader.readLine()) != null) {
        stringBuilder.append(content);
    }
    System.out.println("content of file::" + stringBuilder.toString());
}
catch (IOException e) {
    e.printStackTrace();
}
finally {
    if(bufferedReader != null) {
        try {
            bufferedReader.close();
        }
        catch(IoException ex) {
           ex.printStackTrace();
        }

The following doesn't address the original question, but rather some of the responses.

Several responses suggest loops of the form

String line = null;
while((line = reader.readLine()) != null) {
  // ...
}

or

for(String line = reader.readLine(); line != null; line = reader.readLine()) {
    // ...
}

The first form pollutes the namespace of the enclosing scope by declaring a variable "read" in the enclosing scope that will not be used for anything outside the for loop. The second form duplicates the readline() call.

Here is a much cleaner way of writing this sort of loop in Java. It turns out that the first clause in a for-loop doesn't require an actual initializer value. This keeps the scope of the variable "line" to within the body of the for loop. Much more elegant! I haven't seen anybody using this form anywhere (I randomly discovered it one day years ago), but I use it all the time.

for (String line; (line = reader.readLine()) != null; ) {
    //...
}

Method to convert inputStream to String

public static String getStringFromInputStream(InputStream inputStream) {

    BufferedReader bufferedReader = null;
    StringBuilder stringBuilder = new StringBuilder();
    String line;

    try {
        bufferedReader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(
                inputStream));
        while ((line = bufferedReader.readLine()) != null) {
            stringBuilder.append(line);
        }
    } catch (IOException e) {
        logger.error(e.getMessage());
    } finally {
        if (bufferedReader != null) {
            try {
                bufferedReader.close();
            } catch (IOException e) {
                logger.error(e.getMessage());
            }
        }
    }
    return stringBuilder.toString();
}

If you're using AWS SDK v2, call IoUtils.toUtf8String():

public String convertStreamToString(InputStream is) {
    return IoUtils.toUtf8String(is);
}

How do I read / convert an InputStream into a String in Java?

You would provide one more possible solution where performance is the main concern, you can improve speed by using a BufferedReader to read the InputStream line by line, instead of reading the InputStream byte by byte. Here it is a code:

public String convertStreamToString(InputStream inputStream) throws IOException {
    BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(inputStream));
    StringBuilder stringBuilder = new StringBuilder();
    String line;
    while ((line = reader.readLine()) != null) {
        stringBuilder.append(line).append("\n");
    }
    return stringBuilder.toString();
}

When compared to reading the input byte by byte, this method buffers the information and reads it in chunks, which can greatly improve performance.

This solution to this question is not the simplest, but since NIO streams and channels have not been mentioned, here goes a version which uses NIO channels and a ByteBuffer to convert a stream into a string.

public static String streamToStringChannel(InputStream in, String encoding, int bufSize) throws IOException {
    ReadableByteChannel channel = Channels.newChannel(in);
    ByteBuffer byteBuffer = ByteBuffer.allocate(bufSize);
    ByteArrayOutputStream bout = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
    WritableByteChannel outChannel = Channels.newChannel(bout);
    while (channel.read(byteBuffer) > 0 || byteBuffer.position() > 0) {
        byteBuffer.flip();  //make buffer ready for write
        outChannel.write(byteBuffer);
        byteBuffer.compact(); //make buffer ready for reading
    }
    channel.close();
    outChannel.close();
    return bout.toString(encoding);
}

Here is an example how to use it:

try (InputStream in = new FileInputStream("/tmp/large_file.xml")) {
    String x = streamToStringChannel(in, "UTF-8", 1);
    System.out.println(x);
}

The performance of this method should be good for large files.

Use java.util.Scanner to read InputStream into a String:

String result = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(inputStream))
                    .lines().collect(Collectors.joining("\n"));

This snippet was found in \sdk\samples\android-19\connectivity\NetworkConnect\NetworkConnectSample\src\main\java\com\example\android\networkconnect\MainActivity.java which is licensed under Apache License, Version 2.0 and written by Google.

/** Reads an InputStream and converts it to a String.
 * @param stream InputStream containing HTML from targeted site.
 * @param len Length of string that this method returns.
 * @return String concatenated according to len parameter.
 * @throws java.io.IOException
 * @throws java.io.UnsupportedEncodingException
 */
private String readIt(InputStream stream, int len) throws IOException, UnsupportedEncodingException {
    Reader reader = null;
    reader = new InputStreamReader(stream, "UTF-8");
    char[] buffer = new char[len];
    reader.read(buffer);
    return new String(buffer);
}

I suggest the StringWriter class for that problem.

StringWriter wt= new StringWriter();
IOUtils.copy(inputStream, wt, encoding);
String st= wt.toString();

I see a lot of just snippets but zero explanations as to WHY this the snippet is a good way. I'm going to limit myself to just plain Java. What's key to understand about Java:

• java.io.InputStream is for reading bytes.
• java.io.Reader is for reading character data.

You should NOT be reading InputStream and converting that to Strings yourself because the world we are in isn't single byte focused anymore. And this is where java.nio.charset.Charset objects come into play. Charset classes convert bytes -> char. They bridge java.io.InputStream and java.io.Reader. You have to have java.nio.charset.Charset to convert InputStream into a Reader.

I'm going to do this the low memory usage way (Well until you read the thing into a single string which will eat up the full memory, but dems the requirements ;-)

Here's the code:

public String readString(InputStream inStream) {
   char[] buffer = new char[2**16];
   try( Reader reader = new InputStreamReader( inStream, "UTF-8") ) {
      int length = -1;
      StringBuilder builder = new StringBuilder();
      while( (length = reader.read( buffer, 0, buffer.length )) >= 0 ) {
          builder.append( buffer, 0, length );
      }
   }
   return builder.toString();
}

The key here is to use InputStreamReader to bridge between InputStream -> Reader where you can read character data. From there it's simple to build the string using a StringBuilder. Another important part of InputStreamReader is specifying the character encoding. In this case I used "UTF-8", but it could be "ISO-8859-1" or "UTF-16", etc.

Word to the wise. I didn't use BufferedInputStream or BufferedReader to wrap these. Those classes are overused. If you are calling Reader.read( char[], int start, int len) or other array read methods then you are providing a buffer. Your usage is mostly optimized (the size of the buffer is what is in question) There is no need to have BufferedInputStream create yet another buffer for you. You've allocated your buffer so there is zero advantage added by wrapping your InputStream in a BufferedInputStream. Now if you are calling InputStream.read() or Reader.read() then yes those classes are providing a speed boost by converting single byte/char reads into buffered reads. But most of the time people don't read byte by byte.

The only exception to that advice is if you want to use readLine in which case BufferedReader is your friend, and go right ahead and use it. A word of caution is in order. If you are reading a 1GB one line file it's going to take over 1GB of memory to read your file which is probably NOT what you want.

That's the tightest loop with minimal memory usage for reading the actual data. And that's why reading the full data into a String might not always be the best approach, but this code can be adapted to other situations. If you were write it out to a java.io.Writer that streamed it out to an external storage it'd be very tight.