Best way of converting between byte[] and string?

Question

I know this question was asked two times before on stack-overflow, but this time I'm asking for the most guaranteed way of doing so(The way that doesn't change the value of the data). I want to convert from string to byte[] then back to string. I could use ByteConverter, Convert, Encoding, BitConverter, HttpServerUtility.UrlTokenEncode / HttpServerUtility.UrlTokenDecodethe following code:

string s2 = BitConverter.ToString(bytes);   // 82-C8-EA-17
String[] tempAry = s2.Split('-');
byte[] decBytes2 = new byte[tempAry.Length];
for (int i = 0; i < tempAry.Length; i++)
{
    decBytes2[i] = Convert.ToByte(tempAry[i], 16);
}

or the following code:

private string ToString(byte[] bytes)
{
    string response = string.Empty;

    foreach (byte b in bytes)
        response += (Char)b;

    return response;
}

If you don't still get what I want, I wanna know which way works and which doesn't, I wanna know which way is should be used. Hey, I would prefer a byte array with with the least size because I'll be sending this array over the network, and I'll use the first 256 bytes.

If you want the one that uses the lest amount of data [`Convert.ToBase64String`](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.convert.tobase64string(v=vs.110).aspx) will give you a much shorter string than all of the items you listed above. — Scott Chamberlain, Jul 19 '16 at 19:49
Also, what does the question "[How do you convert Byte Array to Hexadecimal String, and vice versa?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/311165/how-do-you-convert-byte-array-to-hexadecimal-string-and-vice-versa)" not cover for you? — Scott Chamberlain, Jul 19 '16 at 19:50

Scott Chamberlain · Accepted Answer · 2016-07-19T21:00:17.793

I want to convert from string to byte[] then back to string.

If that is what you are actually trying to do all you need to do is just use Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(string) on the sending side and Encoding.UTF8.GetString(byte[]) on the receiving side.

private byte[] ToBytes(string message)
{
    return Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(message);
}

private string ToString(byte[] bytes)
{
    return Encoding.UTF8.GetString(bytes);
}

This will give you a round trip to convert any string to bytes and back to a string again in the fewest number of bytes.

This will NOT work to do byte[] to string to byte[], for somthing like that you need to use something like Convert.ToBase64String(byte[]) and Convert.FromBase64String(string). Using Encoding.UTF8.GetString(byte[]) on something that was not a properly formatted UTF8 string will potentially cause you to loose data in the conversion.

Best way of converting between byte[] and string?

1 Answers1