How to copy a Stream from the begining irrespective its current position - c#

I got a file stream which has content read from a disk.
Stream input = new FileStream("filename");
This stream is to be passed to a third party library which after reading the stream, keeps the Stream's position pointer at the end of the file (as ususal).
My requirement is not to load the file from the desk everytime, instead I want to maintain MemoryStream, which will be used everytime.
public static void CopyStream(Stream input, Stream output)
{
byte[] buffer = new byte[32768];
int read;
while ((read = input.Read(buffer, 0, buffer.Length)) > 0)
{
output.Write(buffer, 0, read);
}
}
I have tried the above code. It works for the first very time to copy the input stream to output stream, but subsequent calls to CopyStream will not work as the source's Position will be at the end of the stream after the first call.
Are there other alternatives which copy the content of the source stream to another stream irrespective of the source stream's current Position.
And this code needs to run in thread safe manner in a multi threaded environment.

You can use .NET 4.0 Stream.CopyTo to copy your steam to a MemoryStream. The MemoryStream has a Position property you can use to move its postition to the beginning.
var ms = new MemoryStream();
using (Stream file = File.OpenRead(#"filename"))
{
file.CopyTo(ms);
}
ms.Position = 0;
To make a thread safe solution, you can copy the content to a byte array, and make a new MemoryStream wrapping the byte array for each thread that need access:
byte[] fileBytes = ms.ToArray();
var ms2 = new MemoryStream(fileBytes);

You should check the input stream's CanSeek property. If that returns false, you can only read it once anyway. If CanSeek returns true, you can set the position to zero and copy away.
if (input.CanSeek)
{
input.Position = 0;
}
You may also want to store the old position and restore it after copying.
ETA: Passing the same instance of a Stream around is not the safest thing to do. E.g. you can't be sure the Stream wasn't disposed when you get it back. I'd suggest to copy the FileStream to a MemoryStream in the beginning, but only store the byte content of the latter by calling ToArray(). When you need to pass a Stream somewhere, just create a new one each time with new MemoryStream(byte[]).

Related

Stream only partially read when downloading object from Amazon AWS S3 [duplicate]

This question already has answers here:
How to get all data from NetworkStream
(8 answers)
Closed 4 years ago.
I am trying to simply download an object from my bucket using C# just like we can find in S3 examples, and I can't figure out why the stream won't be entirely copied to my byte array. Only the first 8192 bytes are copied instead of the whole stream.
I have tried with with an Amazon.S3.AmazonS3Client and with an Amazon.S3.Transfer.TransferUtility, but in both cases only the first bytes are actually copied into the buffer.
var stream = await _transferUtility.OpenStreamAsync(BucketName, key);
using (stream)
{
byte[] content = new byte[stream.Length];
stream.Read(content, 0, content.Length);
// Here content should contain all the data from the stream, but only the first 8192 bytes are actually populated.
}
When debugging, I see the stream type is Amazon.Runtime.Internal.Util.Md5Stream, and inside the stream, before calling Read() the property CurrentPosition = 0. After the call, CurrentPosition becomes 8192, which seems to indeed indicate only the first 8K of data was read. The total Length of the stream is 104042.
If I make more calls to stream.Read(), I see more data gets read and CurrentPosition increases in value. But CurrentPosition is not a public property, and I cannot access it in my code to make a while() loop (and having to code such loops to read all the data seems a bit clunky).
Why are only the first 8K read in my code? How should I proceed to read the entire stream?
I tried calling stream.Flush(), but it did not fix the problem.
EDIT 1
I have modified my code so it does the following:
var stream = await _transferUtility.OpenStreamAsync(BucketName, key);
using (stream)
{
byte[] content = new byte[stream.Length];
var bytesRead = 0;
while (bytesRead < stream.Length)
bytesRead += stream.Read(content, bytesRead, content.Length - bytesRead);
}
And it works. But still looks clunky. Is it normal I have to do this?
EDIT 2
Final solution is to create a MemoryStream of the correct size and then call CopyTo(). So no clunky loop anymore and no risk of infinite loop if Read() starts returning 0 before the whole stream has been read:
var stream = await _transferUtility.OpenStreamAsync(BucketName, key);
using (stream)
{
using (var memoryStream = new MemoryStream((int)stream.Length))
{
stream.CopyTo(memoryStream);
var myBuffer = memoryStream.GetBuffer();
}
}
stream.Read() returns the number of bytes read. You can then keep track of the total number of bytes read until you have reached the end of the file (content.Length).
You could also just loop until the returned value is 0 meaning error / no more bytes left.
You will need to keep track of the current offset for your content buffer so that you are not overwriting data for each call.

memorystream(byte[]) vs memorystream.write(byte[])

I needed to put a byte to a memory stream so initially, I used:
byte[] Input;
using (MemoryStream mem = new MemoryStream())
{
mem.Write(Input, 0, (int)Input.Length);
StreamReader stream = new StreamReader(mem);
...
}
I wanted to use the Streamreader to read lines from a text file.
It didn't work.
Then I used
using (MemoryStream mem = new MemoryStream(Input))
instead and removed
mem.Write(Input, 0, (int)Input.Length);
It worked. I don't know why. Why did it work?
In your first approach, you use mem.Write(Input, 0, (int)Input.Length);. Note that MemoryStream.Write sets the stream read/write position behind the written data. In your example case this is equivalent with a position signifying the end of the stream. Trying to read from the MemoryStream again will not return any data, as the MemoryStream read/write position is at the end of the stream.
In your second approach, you passed the Input byte array as argument to the MemoryStream constructor. Providing the byte array through the constructor not only will make MemoryStream use this byte array, but more importantly it keeps the initial stream position of zero. Thus, when trying to read from the MemoryStream initialized in this way, the data contained in the input byte array will be returned as expected.
How to fix the problem with the first approach?
You can make the first approach with MemoryStream.Write working by simply setting the MemoryStream position back to the intended/original value (in your example case it would be zero) after writing the data to the MemoryStream:
byte[] Input;
using (MemoryStream mem = new MemoryStream())
{
mem.Write(Input, 0, (int)Input.Length);
mem.Position = 0;
using (StreamReader stream = new StreamReader(mem))
{
...
}
}

Image from Stream - only works on first page load

We have a code snippet that is converting Stream to byte[] and later displaying that as an image in aspx page.
Problem is when first time page loads image is being displayed, but not displaying for later requests (reload etc).
Only difference I observed is Stream position in 'input' (ConvertStreamtoByteArray) is 0 for the first time and subsequent calls is > 0. How do I fix this?
context.Response.Clear();
context.Response.ContentType = "image/pjpeg";
context.Response.BinaryWrite(ConvertStreamtoByteArray(imgStream));
context.Response.End();
private static byte[] ConvertStreamtoByteArray(Stream input)
{
var buffer = new byte[16 * 1024];
using (var ms = new MemoryStream())
{
int read;
while ((read = input.Read(buffer, 0, buffer.Length)) > 0)
{
ms.Write(buffer, 0, read);
}
return ms.ToArray();
}
}
I think the source is : Creating a byte array from a stream
I think the code snippet is from above link, I see everything matches except for method name.
You're (most likely) holding a reference to imgStream, so the same stream is being used every time ConvertStreamtoByteArray is called.
The problem is that streams track their Position. This starts at 0 when the stream is new, and ends up at the end when you read the entire stream.
Usually the solution in this case is to set the Position back to 0 prior to copying the content of the stream.
In your case, you should probably 1) convert imgStream to a byte array the first time it's needed 2) cache this byte array and not the stream 3) dispose and throw away imgStream and 4) pass the byte array to the Response from this point onwards.
See, this is what happens when you copypasta code from the internets. Weird stuff like this, repeatedly converting the same stream to a byte array (waste of time!), and you end up not using the framework to do your work for you. Manually copying streams is so 2000s.

Stream on the fly decompressing causes artifacts when buffer is larger than 1byte

I am currently testing several decompression libraries for a project I'm involved with to decompress http file streams on the fly. I have tried two very promising libraries and found an issue that seems to appear in both of them.
This is what I am doing:
video.avi compressed to video.zip on HTTP server test.com/video.zip (~20MB)
HttpWebRequest to read stream from the server
Write HttpWebRequest ResponseStream data into MemoryStream
Let decompression library read from MemoryStream
Read decompressed file stream while it's being downloaded by HttpWebRequest
The whole idea works fine, I'm able to uncompress and stream the compressed video directly into VLC stdin and it's rendered just fine. However I have to use a read buffer of one byte on the decompression library. Any buffer larger than one byte will cause the uncompressed data stream to be cut off. For a test I've written the decompressed stream into a file and compared it with the original video.avi and some data is just skipped by the decompression. When streaming this broken data into VLC it causes a lot of video artifacts and the playback speed is also greatly reduced.
If I knew the size of what is available to read I could trim my buffer accordingly but no library would make this information public so all I can do is read the data with a one byte buffer. Maybe my approach is wrong? Or maybe I'm overlooking something?
Here's an example code (requires VLC):
ICSharpCode.SharpZLib (http://icsharpcode.github.io/SharpZipLib/)
static void Main(string[] args)
{
// Initialise VLC
Process vlc = new Process()
{
StartInfo =
{
FileName = #"C:\Program Files\VideoLAN\vlc.exe", // Adjust as required to test the code
RedirectStandardInput = true,
UseShellExecute = false,
Arguments = "-"
}
};
vlc.Start();
Stream outStream = vlc.StandardInput.BaseStream;
// Get source stream
HttpWebRequest stream = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create("http://codefreak.net/~daniel/apps/stream60s-large.zip");
Stream compressedVideoStream = stream.GetResponse().GetResponseStream();
// Create local decompression loop
MemoryStream compressedLoopback = new MemoryStream();
ZipInputStream zipStream = new ZipInputStream(compressedLoopback);
ZipEntry currentEntry = null;
byte[] videoStreamBuffer = new byte[8129]; // 8kb read buffer
int read = 0;
long totalRead = 0;
while ((read = compressedVideoStream.Read(videoStreamBuffer, 0, videoStreamBuffer.Length)) > 0)
{
// Write compressed video stream into compressed loopback without affecting current read position
long previousPosition = compressedLoopback.Position; // Store current read position
compressedLoopback.Position = totalRead; // Jump to last write position
totalRead += read; // Increase last write position by current read size
compressedLoopback.Write(videoStreamBuffer, 0, read); // Write data into loopback
compressedLoopback.Position = previousPosition; // Restore reading position
// If not already, move to first entry
if (currentEntry == null)
currentEntry = zipStream.GetNextEntry();
byte[] outputBuffer = new byte[1]; // Decompression read buffer, this is the bad one!
int zipRead = 0;
while ((zipRead = zipStream.Read(outputBuffer, 0, outputBuffer.Length)) > 0)
outStream.Write(outputBuffer, 0, outputBuffer.Length); // Write directly to VLC stdin
}
}
SharpCompress (https://github.com/adamhathcock/sharpcompress)
static void Main(string[] args)
{
// Initialise VLC
Process vlc = new Process()
{
StartInfo =
{
FileName = #"C:\Program Files\VideoLAN\vlc.exe", // Adjust as required to test the code
RedirectStandardInput = true,
UseShellExecute = false,
Arguments = "-"
}
};
vlc.Start();
Stream outStream = vlc.StandardInput.BaseStream;
// Get source stream
HttpWebRequest stream = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create("http://codefreak.net/~daniel/apps/stream60s-large.zip");
Stream compressedVideoStream = stream.GetResponse().GetResponseStream();
// Create local decompression loop
MemoryStream compressedLoopback = new MemoryStream();
ZipReader zipStream = null;
EntryStream currentEntry = null;
byte[] videoStreamBuffer = new byte[8129]; // 8kb read buffer
int read = 0;
long totalRead = 0;
while ((read = compressedVideoStream.Read(videoStreamBuffer, 0, videoStreamBuffer.Length)) > 0)
{
// Write compressed video stream into compressed loopback without affecting current read position
long previousPosition = compressedLoopback.Position; // Store current read position
compressedLoopback.Position = totalRead; // Jump to last write position
totalRead += read; // Increase last write position by current read size
compressedLoopback.Write(videoStreamBuffer, 0, read); // Write data into loopback
compressedLoopback.Position = previousPosition; // Restore reading position
// Open stream after writing to it because otherwise it will not be able to identify the compression type
if (zipStream == null)
zipStream = (ZipReader)ReaderFactory.Open(compressedLoopback); // Cast to ZipReader, as we know the type
// If not already, move to first entry
if (currentEntry == null)
{
zipStream.MoveToNextEntry();
currentEntry = zipStream.OpenEntryStream();
}
byte[] outputBuffer = new byte[1]; // Decompression read buffer, this is the bad one!
int zipRead = 0;
while ((zipRead = currentEntry.Read(outputBuffer, 0, outputBuffer.Length)) > 0)
outStream.Write(outputBuffer, 0, outputBuffer.Length); // Write directly to VLC stdin
}
}
To test this code I recommend setting the output buffer for SharpZipLib to 2 bytes and for SharpCompress to 8 bytes. You will see the artifacts and also that the play speed of the video is wrong, the seek time should always be aligned with the number that is counting in the video.
I haven't really found any good explanation of why a larger outputBuffer that is reading from the decompression lib is causing these problems or a way to solve this other than having the tiniest possible buffer.
So my question is what I am doing wrong or if this is a general issue when reading compressed files from streams? How could I increase the outputBuffer while reading the correct data?
Any help is greatly appreciated!
Regards,
Gachl
You need to write only how many bytes you read. Writing the entire buffer size will add additional bytes (whatever happened to be in the buffer before). zipStream.Read is not required to read as many bytes as you request.
while ((zipRead = zipStream.Read(outputBuffer, 0, outputBuffer.Length)) > 0)
outStream.Write(outputBuffer, 0, zipRead); // Write directly to VLC stdin

How do I copy the contents of one stream to another?

What is the best way to copy the contents of one stream to another? Is there a standard utility method for this?
From .NET 4.5 on, there is the Stream.CopyToAsync method
input.CopyToAsync(output);
This will return a Task that can be continued on when completed, like so:
await input.CopyToAsync(output)
// Code from here on will be run in a continuation.
Note that depending on where the call to CopyToAsync is made, the code that follows may or may not continue on the same thread that called it.
The SynchronizationContext that was captured when calling await will determine what thread the continuation will be executed on.
Additionally, this call (and this is an implementation detail subject to change) still sequences reads and writes (it just doesn't waste a threads blocking on I/O completion).
From .NET 4.0 on, there's is the Stream.CopyTo method
input.CopyTo(output);
For .NET 3.5 and before
There isn't anything baked into the framework to assist with this; you have to copy the content manually, like so:
public static void CopyStream(Stream input, Stream output)
{
byte[] buffer = new byte[32768];
int read;
while ((read = input.Read(buffer, 0, buffer.Length)) > 0)
{
output.Write (buffer, 0, read);
}
}
Note 1: This method will allow you to report on progress (x bytes read so far ...)
Note 2: Why use a fixed buffer size and not input.Length? Because that Length may not be available! From the docs:
If a class derived from Stream does not support seeking, calls to Length, SetLength, Position, and Seek throw a NotSupportedException.
MemoryStream has .WriteTo(outstream);
and .NET 4.0 has .CopyTo on normal stream object.
.NET 4.0:
instream.CopyTo(outstream);
I use the following extension methods. They have optimized overloads for when one stream is a MemoryStream.
public static void CopyTo(this Stream src, Stream dest)
{
int size = (src.CanSeek) ? Math.Min((int)(src.Length - src.Position), 0x2000) : 0x2000;
byte[] buffer = new byte[size];
int n;
do
{
n = src.Read(buffer, 0, buffer.Length);
dest.Write(buffer, 0, n);
} while (n != 0);
}
public static void CopyTo(this MemoryStream src, Stream dest)
{
dest.Write(src.GetBuffer(), (int)src.Position, (int)(src.Length - src.Position));
}
public static void CopyTo(this Stream src, MemoryStream dest)
{
if (src.CanSeek)
{
int pos = (int)dest.Position;
int length = (int)(src.Length - src.Position) + pos;
dest.SetLength(length);
while(pos < length)
pos += src.Read(dest.GetBuffer(), pos, length - pos);
}
else
src.CopyTo((Stream)dest);
}
.NET Framework 4 introduce new "CopyTo" method of Stream Class of System.IO namespace. Using this method we can copy one stream to another stream of different stream class.
Here is example for this.
FileStream objFileStream = File.Open(Server.MapPath("TextFile.txt"), FileMode.Open);
Response.Write(string.Format("FileStream Content length: {0}", objFileStream.Length.ToString()));
MemoryStream objMemoryStream = new MemoryStream();
// Copy File Stream to Memory Stream using CopyTo method
objFileStream.CopyTo(objMemoryStream);
Response.Write("<br/><br/>");
Response.Write(string.Format("MemoryStream Content length: {0}", objMemoryStream.Length.ToString()));
Response.Write("<br/><br/>");
There is actually, a less heavy-handed way of doing a stream copy. Take note however, that this implies that you can store the entire file in memory. Don't try and use this if you are working with files that go into the hundreds of megabytes or more, without caution.
public static void CopySmallTextStream(Stream input, Stream output)
{
using (StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(input))
using (StreamWriter writer = new StreamWriter(output))
{
writer.Write(reader.ReadToEnd());
}
}
NOTE: There may also be some issues concerning binary data and character encodings.
The basic questions that differentiate implementations of "CopyStream" are:
size of the reading buffer
size of the writes
Can we use more than one thread (writing while we are reading).
The answers to these questions result in vastly different implementations of CopyStream and are dependent on what kind of streams you have and what you are trying to optimize. The "best" implementation would even need to know what specific hardware the streams were reading and writing to.
Unfortunately, there is no really simple solution. You can try something like that:
Stream s1, s2;
byte[] buffer = new byte[4096];
int bytesRead = 0;
while (bytesRead = s1.Read(buffer, 0, buffer.Length) > 0) s2.Write(buffer, 0, bytesRead);
s1.Close(); s2.Close();
But the problem with that that different implementation of the Stream class might behave differently if there is nothing to read. A stream reading a file from a local harddrive will probably block until the read operaition has read enough data from the disk to fill the buffer and only return less data if it reaches the end of file. On the other hand, a stream reading from the network might return less data even though there are more data left to be received.
Always check the documentation of the specific stream class you are using before using a generic solution.
There may be a way to do this more efficiently, depending on what kind of stream you're working with. If you can convert one or both of your streams to a MemoryStream, you can use the GetBuffer method to work directly with a byte array representing your data. This lets you use methods like Array.CopyTo, which abstract away all the issues raised by fryguybob. You can just trust .NET to know the optimal way to copy the data.
if you want a procdure to copy a stream to other the one that nick posted is fine but it is missing the position reset, it should be
public static void CopyStream(Stream input, Stream output)
{
byte[] buffer = new byte[32768];
long TempPos = input.Position;
while (true)
{
int read = input.Read (buffer, 0, buffer.Length);
if (read <= 0)
return;
output.Write (buffer, 0, read);
}
input.Position = TempPos;// or you make Position = 0 to set it at the start
}
but if it is in runtime not using a procedure you shpuld use memory stream
Stream output = new MemoryStream();
byte[] buffer = new byte[32768]; // or you specify the size you want of your buffer
long TempPos = input.Position;
while (true)
{
int read = input.Read (buffer, 0, buffer.Length);
if (read <= 0)
return;
output.Write (buffer, 0, read);
}
input.Position = TempPos;// or you make Position = 0 to set it at the start
Since none of the answers have covered an asynchronous way of copying from one stream to another, here is a pattern that I've successfully used in a port forwarding application to copy data from one network stream to another. It lacks exception handling to emphasize the pattern.
const int BUFFER_SIZE = 4096;
static byte[] bufferForRead = new byte[BUFFER_SIZE];
static byte[] bufferForWrite = new byte[BUFFER_SIZE];
static Stream sourceStream = new MemoryStream();
static Stream destinationStream = new MemoryStream();
static void Main(string[] args)
{
// Initial read from source stream
sourceStream.BeginRead(bufferForRead, 0, BUFFER_SIZE, BeginReadCallback, null);
}
private static void BeginReadCallback(IAsyncResult asyncRes)
{
// Finish reading from source stream
int bytesRead = sourceStream.EndRead(asyncRes);
// Make a copy of the buffer as we'll start another read immediately
Array.Copy(bufferForRead, 0, bufferForWrite, 0, bytesRead);
// Write copied buffer to destination stream
destinationStream.BeginWrite(bufferForWrite, 0, bytesRead, BeginWriteCallback, null);
// Start the next read (looks like async recursion I guess)
sourceStream.BeginRead(bufferForRead, 0, BUFFER_SIZE, BeginReadCallback, null);
}
private static void BeginWriteCallback(IAsyncResult asyncRes)
{
// Finish writing to destination stream
destinationStream.EndWrite(asyncRes);
}
For .NET 3.5 and before try :
MemoryStream1.WriteTo(MemoryStream2);
Easy and safe - make new stream from original source:
MemoryStream source = new MemoryStream(byteArray);
MemoryStream copy = new MemoryStream(byteArray);
The following code to solve the issue copy the Stream to MemoryStream using CopyTo
Stream stream = new MemoryStream();
//any function require input the stream. In mycase to save the PDF file as stream
document.Save(stream);
MemoryStream newMs = (MemoryStream)stream;
byte[] getByte = newMs.ToArray();
//Note - please dispose the stream in the finally block instead of inside using block as it will throw an error 'Access denied as the stream is closed'

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