Java String getBytes()

The syntax of the String getBytes() method are:

string.getBytes()
string.getBytes(Charset charset)
string.getBytes(String charsetName)

Here, string is an object of the String class.

The getBytes() method returns a byte array.

1. getBytes() Without Any Parameters

If you do not pass any parameters, getBytes() encodes the string using the platform's default charset.

Example: getBytes() Without Any Parameters

import java.util.Arrays;

class Main {
  public static void main(String[] args) {

    String str = "Java";
    byte[] byteArray;

    // convert the string to a byte array
    // using platform's default charset
    byteArray = str.getBytes();
    System.out.println(Arrays.toString(byteArray));
  }
}

Output

[74, 97, 118, 97]

Note: We have used the Arrays class in the above example to print the byte array in a readable form. It has nothing to do with getBytes().

2. getBytes() With CharSet Parameter

Here are different CharSet available in java:

• UTF-8 - Eight-bit UCS Transformation Format
• UTF-16 - Sixteen-bit UCS Transformation Format
• UTF-16BE - Sixteen-bit UCS Transformation Format, big-endian byte order
• UTF-16LE - Sixteen-bit UCS Transformation Format, little-endian byte order
• US-ASCII - Seven-bit ASCII
• ISO-8859-1 - ISO Latin Alphabet No. 1

Example: getBytes() With CharSet Parameter

import java.util.Arrays;
import java.nio.charset.Charset;

class Main {
  public static void main(String[] args) {

    String str = "Java";
    byte[] byteArray;

    // using UTF-8 for encoding
    byteArray = str.getBytes(Charset.forName("UTF-8"));
    System.out.println(Arrays.toString(byteArray));

    // using UTF-16 for encoding
    byteArray = str.getBytes(Charset.forName("UTF-16"));
    System.out.println(Arrays.toString(byteArray));
  }
}

Output

[74, 97, 118, 97]
[-2, -1, 0, 74, 0, 97, 0, 118, 0, 97]

Note: In the above program, we have imported java.nio.charset.Charset to use CharSet. And, we have imported the Arrays class to print the byte array in a readable form.

3. getBytes() With String Parameter

You can also specify the encoding type to getBytes() using strings. When you use getBytes() in this way, you must wrap the code inside try...catch block.

Example: getBytes() With String Parameter

import java.util.Arrays;

class Main {
  public static void main(String[] args) {

    String str = "Java";
    byte[] byteArray;

    try {
      byteArray = str.getBytes("UTF-8");
      System.out.println(Arrays.toString(byteArray));

      byteArray = str.getBytes("UTF-16");
      System.out.println(Arrays.toString(byteArray));

      // wrong encoding
      // throws an exception
      byteArray = str.getBytes("UTF-34");
      System.out.println(Arrays.toString(byteArray));

    } catch (Exception e) {
      System.out.println(e + " encoding is wrong");
    }

  }
}

Output

[74, 97, 118, 97]
[-2, -1, 0, 74, 0, 97, 0, 118, 0, 97]
java.io.UnsupportedEncodingException: UTF-34 encoding is wrong

Note: We have imported java.util.Arrays to print the byte array in a readable form. It has nothing to do with getBytes().