Convert SQL Binary to byte array

Question

Given some data stored in a SQL binary field:

0x83C8BB02E96F2383870CC1619B6EC...

I'd like to convert it into a byte array, but it doesn't seem like I can just cast this directly into a byte like so:

byte[] someBytes = (byte) 0x83C8BB02E96F2383870CC1619B6EC...;

What am I missing here?

Uh? Querying the DB for a binary field will return a byte array. — Diego Mijelshon
– Diego Mijelshon, Commented Oct 12, 2010 at 15:07
Say I'm in Query Analyzer, and I SELECT from a binary field, the result grid has the value from above (I truncated the example because it's over 300 characters long). — JMP
– JMP, Commented Oct 12, 2010 at 15:10

ladenedge · Accepted Answer · 2010-10-12 15:12:41Z

5

The data stored in the SQL field is in binary. The '0x83..' string you quoted is just a hexadecimal representation of that binary data.

If you just want to copy/paste the hexadecimal data into your C# code (as you seem to have written), then you'll need to convert it from hexadecimal to binary. .NET provides a (rather obscure) class for this sort of thing:

using System.Runtime.Remoting.Metadata.W3cXsd2001.SoapHexBinary

public byte[] ToBytes(string hex)
{
    var shb = SoapHexBinary.Parse(hex);
    return shb.Value;
}

public void TestConvert()
{
    byte[] someBytes = ToBytes("83C8BB02E96F2383870CC1619B6EC");
}

If your binary data is coming from your database in a different form than a copy/pasted string, you'll need to provide more information about your setup.

answered Oct 12, 2010 at 15:12

ladenedge

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3 Comments

StingyJack Over a year ago

Removing the 0x from the string is a subtle but important difference between the data that would be copied and the example here. Without doing that you will get xsd:hexBinary errors

georgiaboy82 Over a year ago

I'm getting xsd:hexBinary invalid errors even after removing the 0x. Edit: removing one character from the end (to make the length even, I suppose) fixed it.

codeMonkey Over a year ago

Is there a way to do this in .NET Core? I can't find an analogous library

full-stack · Accepted Answer · 2018-07-02 13:28:00Z

4

Your casting is wrong.

byte[] someBytes = (byte[]) 0x83C8BB02E96F2383870CC1619B6EC...;

I had the same problem and I stumbled across this question. After further research I tried casting like the above and it worked.

answered Jul 2, 2018 at 13:28

full-stack

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1 Comment

codeMonkey Over a year ago

I'm getting error "Integral constant is too large". Any ideas?

codeMonkey · Accepted Answer · 2022-08-15 15:24:47Z

0

Stolen from this answer:

Remove the 0x from the beginning of your data and create a string:

var stringHex = "83C8BB02E96F2383870CC1619B6EC...";

Then convert to byte[] with this method:

byte[] myArray = Enumerable.Range(0, stringHex.Length / 2)
                           .Select(x => Convert.ToByte(stringHex.Substring(x * 2, 2), 16))
                           .ToArray();

I had to use this method because my data was too long, so I was getting errors about Int32 and Int64 overflow.

answered Aug 15, 2022 at 15:24

codeMonkey

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