How do I convert a byte array to a string - c#

I have a byte array which I got back from a FileStream.Read and I would like to turn that into a string. I'm not 100% sure of the encoding - it's just a file i saved to disk - how do I do the conversion? Is there a .NET class that reads the byte order mark and can figure out the encoding for me?

See how-to-guess-the-encoding-of-a-file-with-no-bom-in-net.
Since strings are Unicode, you must specify an encoding on conversion. Text streams (even ReadAllText() ) have an active encoding inside, usually some sensible default.

Try something like this:
buffer = Encoding.Convert( Encoding.GetEncoding("iso-8859-1"), Encoding.UTF8, buffer );
newString = Encoding.UTF8.GetString( buffer, 0, len );

If File.ReadAllText will read the file correctly, then you have a couple of options.
Instead of calling BeginRead, you could just call File.ReadAllText asynchronously:
delegate string AsyncMethodCaller(string fname);
static void Main(string[] args)
{
string InputFilename = "testo.txt";
AsyncMethodCaller caller = File.ReadAllText;
IAsyncResult rslt = caller.BeginInvoke(InputFilename, null, null);
// do other work ...
string fileContents = caller.EndInvoke(rslt);
}
Or you can create a MemoryStream from the byte array, and then use a StreamReader on that.

How much do you know about the file? Could it really be any encoding? If so, you'd need to use heuristics to guess the encoding. If it's going to be UTF-8, UTF-16 or UTF-32 then
new StreamReader(new MemoryStream(bytes), true)
will detect the encoding for you automatically. Text is pretty nasty if you really don't know the encoding though. There are plenty of cases where you really would just be guessing.

There is no simple way to get the encoding, but as mentioned above use
string str = System.Text.Encoding.Default.GetString(mybytearray);
if you have no clue of what the encoding is. If you are in europe the ISO-8859-1 is probably the encoding you have.
string str = System.Text.Encoding.GetEncoding("ISO-8859-1").GetString(mybytearray);

System.IO.File.ReadAllText does what you want.

Related

How to convert unicode to utf-8 encoding in c#

I want to convert unicode string to UTF8 string. I want to use this UTF8 string in SMS API to send unicode SMS.
I want conversion like this tool
https://cafewebmaster.com/online_tools/utf8_encode
eg. I have unicode string "हैलो फ़्रेंड्स" and it should be converted into "हà¥à¤²à¥ à¥à¥à¤°à¥à¤à¤¡à¥à¤¸"
I have tried this but not getting expected output
private string UnicodeToUTF8(string strFrom)
{
byte[] bytes = Encoding.Default.GetBytes(strFrom);
return Encoding.UTF8.GetString(bytes);
}
and calling function like this
string myUTF8String = UnicodeToUTF8("हैलो फ़्रेंड्स");
I don't think this is possible to answer concretely without knowing more about the SMS API you want to use. The string type in C# is UTF-16. If you want a different encoding, it's given to you as a byte[] (because a string is UTF-16, always).
You could 'cast' that into a string by doing something like this:
static string UnicodeToUTF8(string from) {
var bytes = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(from);
return new string(bytes.Select(b => (char)b).ToArray());
}
As far as I can tell this yields the same output as the website you linked. However, without knowing what API you're handing this string off to, I can't guarantee that this will ultimately work.
The point of string is that we don't need to worry about its underlying encoding, but this casting operation is kind of a giant hack and makes no guarantees that string represents a well-formed string anymore.
If something expects a UTF-8 encoding, it should accept a byte[], not a string.
Try this:
string output = "hello world";
byte[] bytes1 = Encoding.Convert(Encoding.Unicode, Encoding.UTF8, Encoding.Unicode.GetBytes(output));
byte[] bytes2 = Encoding.Convert(Encoding.Unicode, Encoding.Unicode, Encoding.Unicode.GetBytes(output));
var output1 = Encoding.UTF8.GetString(bytes1);
var output2 = Encoding.Unicode.GetString(bytes2);
You will see that bytes1 is 11 bytes (1 byte per char UTF-8) and bytes2 is 22 bytes (2 bytes per char for unicode)

Encoding not converting

An ASP.NET page (ashx) receives a GET request with a UTF8 string. It reads a SqlServer database with Windows-1255 data.
I can't seem to get them to work together. I've used information gathered on SO (mainly Convert a string's character encoding from windows-1252 to utf-8) as well as msdn on the subject.
When I run anything through the functions below - it always ends up the same as it started - not converted at all.
Is something done wrong?
EDIT
What I'm specifically trying to do (getData returns a Dictionary<int, string>):
getData().Where(a => a.Value.Contains(context.Request.QueryString["q"]))
Result is empty, unless I send a "neutral" character such as "'" or ",".
CODE
string windows1255FromUTF8(string p)
{
Encoding win = Encoding.GetEncoding(1255);
Encoding utf8 = Encoding.UTF8;
byte[] utfBytes = utf8.GetBytes(p);
byte[] winBytes = Encoding.Convert(utf8, win, utfBytes);
return win.GetString(winBytes);
}
string UTF8FromWindows1255(string p)
{
Encoding win = Encoding.GetEncoding(1255);
Encoding utf8 = Encoding.UTF8;
byte[] winBytes = win.GetBytes(p);
byte[] utfBytes = Encoding.Convert(win, utf8, winBytes);
return utf8.GetString(utfBytes);
}
There is nothing wrong with the functions, they are simply useless.
What the functions do is to encode the strings into bytes, convert the data from one encoding to another, then decode the bytes back to a string. Unless the string contains a character that is not possible to encode using the windows-1255 encoding, the returned value should be identical to the input.
Strings in .NET doesn't have an encoding. If you get a string from a source where the text was encoded using for example UTF-8, once it's decoded into a string it doesn't have that encoding any more. You don't have to do anyting to a string to use it when the destination has a specific encoding, whatever library you are using that takes the string will take care of the encoding.
For some reason this worked:
byte[] fromBytes = (fromEncoding.UTF8).GetBytes(myString);
string finalString = (Encoding.GetEncoding(1255)).GetString(fromBytes);
Switching encoding without the conversion...

how do i read n any character from file?

how do i read any n character from file with c# whole encoding?
i mean not reading byte! i wanna just read one character (any encoding) at a time?
Use TextReader.Read(), probably via StreamReader, which inherits from TextReader.
Try this:
char[] c = new char[5];
using (StreamReader streamReader = File.OpenText("c:\test.txt"))
{
streamReader.Read(c, 0, c.Length);
}
Update:
I just realized that this is for UTF8 encoding only and no further parameters are available to specify the encoding.
StreamReader reader = new StreamReader("date.txt");
string txt = reader.ReadToEnd();
txt(char num);
It's not the most efficient but neither is c# so :/

Encoding Conversion problem

I've got a little problem changing the ecoding of a string. Actually I read from a DB strings that are encoded using the codepage 850 and I have to prepare them in order to be suitable for an interoperable WCF service.
From the DB I read characters \x10 and \x11 (triangular shapes) and i want to convert them to the Unicode format in order to prevent serialization/deserialization problem during WCF call. (Chars
and are not valid according of the XML specs even if WCF serialize them).
Now, I use following code in order to covert string encoding, but nothing happens. Result string is in fact identical to the original one.
I'm probably missing something...
Please help me!!!
Emanuele
static class UnicodeEncodingExtension
{
public static string Convert(this Encoding sourceEncoding, Encoding targetEncoding, string value)
{
string reEncodedString = null;
byte[] sourceBytes = sourceEncoding.GetBytes(value);
byte[] targetBytes = Encoding.Convert(sourceEncoding, targetEncoding, sourceBytes);
reEncodedString = sourceEncoding.GetString(targetBytes);
return reEncodedString;
}
}
class Program
{
private static Encoding Cp850Encoding = Encoding.GetEncoding(850);
private static Encoding UnicodeEncoding = Encoding.UTF8;
static void Main(string[] args)
{
string value;
string resultValue;
value = "\x10";
resultValue = Cp850Encoding.Convert(UnicodeEncoding, value);
value = "\x11";
resultValue = Cp850Encoding.Convert(UnicodeEncoding, value);
value = "\u25b6";
resultValue = UnicodeEncoding.Convert(Cp850Encoding, value);
value = "\u25c0";
resultValue = UnicodeEncoding.Convert(Cp850Encoding, value);
}
}
It seems you think there is a problem based on an incorrect understanding. But jmservera is correct - all strings in .NET are encoded internally as unicode.
You didn't say exactly what you want to accomplish. Are you experiencing a problem at the other end of the wire?
Just FYI, you can set the text encoding on a WCF binding with the textMessageEncoding element in the config file.
I suspect this line may be your culprit
reEncodedString = sourceEncoding.GetString(targetBytes);
which seems to take your target encoded string of bytes and asks your sourceEncoding to make a string out of them. I've not had a chance to verify it but I suspect the following might be better
reEncodedString = targetEncoding.GetString(targetBytes);
All the strings stored in string are in fact Unicode.Unicode. Read: Strings in .Net and C# and The Absolute Minimum Every Software Developer Absolutely, Positively Must Know About Unicode and Character Sets (No Excuses!)
Edit: I suppose that you want the Convert function to automatically change \x11 to \u25c0, but the problem here is that \x11 is valid in almost any encoding, the differences usually start in character \x80, so the Convert function will maintain it even if you do that:
string reEncodedString = null;
byte[] unicodeBytes = UnicodeEncoding.Unicode.GetBytes(value);
byte[] sourceBytes = Encoding.Convert(Encoding.Unicode,
sourceEncoding, unicodeBytes);
You can see in unicode.org the mappings from CP850 to Unicode. So, for this conversion to happen you will have to change these characters manually.
byte[] sourceBytes =Encoding.Default.GetBytes(value)
Encoding.UTF8.GetString(sourceBytes)
this sequence usefull for download unicode file from service(for example xml file that contain persian character)
You should try this:
byte[] sourceBytes = sourceEncoding.GetBytes(value);
var convertedString = Encoding.UTF8.GetString(sourceBytes);

How to convert (transliterate) a string from utf8 to ASCII (single byte) in c#?

I have a string object
"with multiple characters and even special characters"
I am trying to use
UTF8Encoding utf8 = new UTF8Encoding();
ASCIIEncoding ascii = new ASCIIEncoding();
objects in order to convert that string to ascii. May I ask someone to bring some light to this simple task, that is hunting my afternoon.
EDIT 1:
What we are trying to accomplish is getting rid of special characters like some of the special windows apostrophes. The code that I posted below as an answer will not take care of that. Basically
O'Brian will become O?Brian. where ' is one of the special apostrophes
This was in response to your other question, that looks like it's been deleted....the point still stands.
Looks like a classic Unicode to ASCII issue. The trick would be to find where it's happening.
.NET works fine with Unicode, assuming it's told it's Unicode to begin with (or left at the default).
My guess is that your receiving app can't handle it. So, I'd probably use the ASCIIEncoder with an EncoderReplacementFallback with String.Empty:
using System.Text;
string inputString = GetInput();
var encoder = ASCIIEncoding.GetEncoder();
encoder.Fallback = new EncoderReplacementFallback(string.Empty);
byte[] bAsciiString = encoder.GetBytes(inputString);
// Do something with bytes...
// can write to a file as is
File.WriteAllBytes(FILE_NAME, bAsciiString);
// or turn back into a "clean" string
string cleanString = ASCIIEncoding.GetString(bAsciiString);
// since the offending bytes have been removed, can use default encoding as well
Assert.AreEqual(cleanString, Default.GetString(bAsciiString));
Of course, in the old days, we'd just loop though and remove any chars greater than 127...well, those of us in the US at least. ;)
I was able to figure it out. In case someone wants to know below the code that worked for me:
ASCIIEncoding ascii = new ASCIIEncoding();
byte[] byteArray = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(sOriginal);
byte[] asciiArray = Encoding.Convert(Encoding.UTF8, Encoding.ASCII, byteArray);
string finalString = ascii.GetString(asciiArray);
Let me know if there is a simpler way o doing it.
For anyone who likes Extension methods, this one does the trick for us.
using System.Text;
namespace System
{
public static class StringExtension
{
private static readonly ASCIIEncoding asciiEncoding = new ASCIIEncoding();
public static string ToAscii(this string dirty)
{
byte[] bytes = asciiEncoding.GetBytes(dirty);
string clean = asciiEncoding.GetString(bytes);
return clean;
}
}
}
(System namespace so it's available pretty much automatically for all of our strings.)
Based on Mark's answer above (and Geo's comment), I created a two liner version to remove all ASCII exception cases from a string. Provided for people searching for this answer (as I did).
using System.Text;
// Create encoder with a replacing encoder fallback
var encoder = ASCIIEncoding.GetEncoding("us-ascii",
new EncoderReplacementFallback(string.Empty),
new DecoderExceptionFallback());
string cleanString = encoder.GetString(encoder.GetBytes(dirtyString));
If you want 8 bit representation of characters that used in many encoding, this may help you.
You must change variable targetEncoding to whatever encoding you want.
Encoding targetEncoding = Encoding.GetEncoding(874); // Your target encoding
Encoding utf8 = Encoding.UTF8;
var stringBytes = utf8.GetBytes(Name);
var stringTargetBytes = Encoding.Convert(utf8, targetEncoding, stringBytes);
var ascii8BitRepresentAsCsString = Encoding.GetEncoding("Latin1").GetString(stringTargetBytes);

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