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Why some Java functions requires bytes array length when byte arrays object was already provided in the argument?

While writing Java code, I really wonder why some functions require byte arrays length as an argument when the first argument was byte arrays object. Why they don't get the length from the object provided?
For example:
// E.g.: 1. Bitmap
byte[] bytes = task.getResult();
Bitmap bitmap = BitmapFactory.decodeByteArray(bytes, 0, bytes.length);
// E.g.: 2. Datagram
byte[] data = new byte[1024];
DatagramPacket request = new DatagramPacket(data, data.length);
If they want the length, why they don't use data.length?

The byte array is a buffer to which data, the length of which is less than the length of the buffer, is read. The length parameter defines the amount of bytes in the buffer that are relevant. You're not supposed to pass the length of the buffer in the parameter, that would be redundant. You're supposed to pass the number of bytes in the buffer that contain actual data.
The API documentation of DatagramPacket, for example, reveals this.
length - the number of bytes to read

The simple answer is: most read methods (in Java, and any other language) that operate on buffer arrays have to tell you the exact number of bytes that were actually read.
Keep in mind: that array is an buffer. The default behavior is that buffer.length or less bytes can be read. So, knowing how long the buffer is doesn't help you. You have to know how many bytes were actually put into the buffer.

Broadly a buffer is used as a temporary data in a data loading processing.
You fill the buffer until its size or less but never more than its capacity of course.
The DatagramPacket javadoc confirms that :
The length argument must be less than or equal to buf.length.
And a thing that you don't have to forget : conceptually you use a buffer because the data has to be progressively loaded or only a specific part of that.
In some cases you will read as much data as its maximal capacity but in some other cases you need to read only the X first bytes or the bytes from X to Y offset.
So the buffer class methods provide generally multiple way to read from the buffer.
Such as :
public DatagramPacket(byte buf[], int length);
public DatagramPacket(byte buf[], int offset, int length);
Now conceptually you are not wrong, sometimes you want to fill the whole buffer because you know that you will need to read exactly this size of data.
The java.net.DatagramSocket confirms that :
public synchronized void receive(DatagramPacket p) throws IOException {
...
tmp = new DatagramPacket(new byte[1024], 1024);
...
}
So an additional overloading such as :
public DatagramPacket(byte buf[]);
would make sense.

Because the data that you want to read can be less than or equal to byte[] buf's length.
Below is the API documentation :
public DatagramPacket(byte[] buf,
int length)
Constructs a DatagramPacket for receiving packets of length length.
The length argument must be less than or equal to buf.length.
Parameters:
buf - buffer for holding the incoming datagram.
length - the number of bytes to read.
https://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/net/DatagramPacket.html

ByteBuffer and converting between decimal and hex

What I want to do is take a decimal integer, convert it into hexadecimal, and then separate the bytes.
It's my understanding that ByteBuffer is the best way to do this. The integer will not exceed 65535, so the hex number is guaranteed to be 2 bytes. For an example, I have an integer of 40000 (hex value 9C40).
int n1 = 40000;
ByteBuffer b = ByteBuffer.allocate(2);
b.putInt(n1);
However, I get the following error when I run the program:
Exception in thread "main" java.nio.BufferOverflowException
What am I doing wrong? Shouldn't 9C40 be written into b (with b[0] = 9C and b[1] = 40)?
Also, once I get past this, if I want to convert the value stored in b[0] (which is 9C) to decimal (which is 156), would I just use the following code?
int n2 = b.get(0);

As you are working with a ByteBuffer, it stores an amount of x allocated bytes. Now you allocated 2 bytes and you try to store a datatype that has the size of 4 bytes. So the buffer will run out of bounds as the message said. If you want to store this data in a two byte sized buffer, you either use a short (16 bit - 2 bytes) or you allocate 4 bytes for your ByteBuffer.
With short:
ByteBuffer bb = ByteBuffer.allocate(2);
short myShort = (short) 40000;
bb.putShort(myShort);
System.out.println(String.format("%02X, %02X", bb.get(0), bb.get(1)));
With int:
ByteBuffer bb = ByteBuffer.allocate(4);
int myInt = 40000;
bb.putInt(myInt);
System.out.println(String.format("%02X, %02X", bb.get(2), bb.get(3)));
Output: 9C, 40

The data type you used to store the number 40000 is int, which requires 4 bytes of space. Yes I know the number won't exceed 65535 but the computer doesn't. You have to change it to an appropriate data type that can be stored in 2 bytes.
That data type, is short.
But there's another problem if you used short, you can't really store 40000 in short in Java is signed, so its max value is 32767.
So to store your 40000, you have to store -25536 instead in a short, because of overflow.
short n1 = (short)40000; // this will cause n1 to store -25536
ByteBuffer b = ByteBuffer.allocate(2);
b.putShort(n1);
Now it's time to print out the bytes. Bytes in Java are signed as well. So if you print this:
System.out.println(b.get(0));
System.out.println(b.get(1));
You'd get
-100
64
64 is expected since 64 in hex is 40, but why -100? Since bytes are signed, 156 can't be represented as 156. 156 in a signed byte is -100.

Instead of ByteBuffer I prefer Integer class which can convert the integer value to hex string & you can get each byte by index of method.
Use following code it do that
int n = 4000;
String hex = Integer.toHexString(n);
In this way you can get the hex value of any integer for one one byte use indexOf() method of string clas
You can get return the hex value as integer using valueOf() method in Integer class which takes two arguments one is string and another is radix

Convert array of doubles to byte array: What is the Java way of C# Buffer.BlockCopy?

I need to serialize an array of doubles to base64 in Java. I have following method from C#
public static string DoubleArrayToBase64( double[] dValues ) {
byte[] bytes = new byte[dValues.Length * sizeof( double )];
Buffer.BlockCopy( dValues, 0, bytes, 0, bytes.Length );
return Convert.ToBase64String( bytes );
}
How do I do that in Java? I tried
Byte[] bytes = new Byte[abundaceArray.length * Double.SIZE];
System.arraycopy(abundaceArray, 0, bytes, 0, bytes.length);
abundanceValues = Base64.encodeBase64String(bytes);
however this leads to an IndexOutofBoundsException.
How can I achieve this in Java?
EDIT:
Buffer.BlockCopy copies on byte level, the last paramter is number of bytes. System.arraycopy last parameter is number of elements to copy. So yes it should be abundaceArray.length but then a ArrayStoreException is thrown.
EDIT2:
The base64 string must be the same as the ine created with the c# code!

You get an ArrayStoreException when the array types on the method are not the same primitive, so double to byte will not work. Here is a workaround i patched up that seems to work. I do not know of any method in the java core that does automatic conversion from primitive to byte block :
public class CUSTOM {
public static void main(String[] args) {
double[] arr = new double[]{1.1,1.3};
byte[] barr = toByteArray(arr);
for(byte b: barr){
System.out.println(b);
}
}
public static byte[] toByteArray(double[] from) {
byte[] output = new byte[from.length*Double.SIZE/8]; //this is reprezented in bits
int step = Double.SIZE/8;
int index = 0;
for(double d : from){
for(int i=0 ; i<step ; i++){
long bits = Double.doubleToLongBits(d); // first transform to a primitive that allows bit shifting
byte b = (byte)((bits>>>(i*8)) & 0xFF); // bit shift and keep adding
int currentIndex = i+(index*8);
output[currentIndex] = b;
}
index++;
}
return output;
}
}

The Double.SIZE get 64 which is number of bits I suggest to initialize the array like this
Byte[] bytes = new Byte[abundaceArray.length * 8];

Not sure what this C# function does, but I suspect you should replace this line
System.arraycopy(abundaceArray, 0, bytes, 0, bytes.length);
with this
System.arraycopy(abundaceArray, 0, bytes, 0, abundaceArray.length);

I'm guessing you're using the apache commons Base64 class. That only has methods accepting an array of bytes (the primitive type), not Bytes (object wrapper around primitive type).
It's not clear what type your 'abundaceArray' is - whether it's doubles or Doubles.
Either way, you can't use System.arraycopy to copy between arrays of difference primitive types.
I think your best bet is to serialise your array object to a byte array, then base64 encode that.
eg:
ByteArrayOutputStream b = new ByteArrayOutputStream(); // to store output from serialization in a byte array
ObjectOutputStream o = new ObjectOutputStream(b); // to do the serialization
o.writeObject(abundaceArray); // arrays of primitive types are serializable
String abundanceValues = Base64.encodeBase64String(b.toByteArray());
There is of course an ObjectInputStream for going in the other direction at the other end.

Parse a DatagramPacket after converting it to a byte array in Java

I am trying to parse a DatagramPacket that I will receive at a socket. I know the format of the packet I will receive, which is a DHCPREQUEST packet, but I don't think that really matters. For simplicity's sake, let's just consider the first six fields:
First field is the "opcode", which is 1 byte.
Second field is the "hardware type" which is 1 byte.
Third, "hardware address length", 1 byte.
Fourth, "hops", 1 byte.
Fifth, "transaction identifier xid", 4 bytes.
Sixth, "seconds", 2 bytes.
After I receive the packet, my approach is to convert it to a byte array.
DatagramPacket request = new DatagramPacket(new byte[1024], 1024);
socket.receive(request);
byte[] buf = request.getData();
At this point, the packet is stored in the byte array buf as a series of bytes. Since I know what the structure of this byte sequence is, how can I parse it? The one-byte fields are simple enough, but how about the multiple-bit fields? For example, how can I extract bytes 4 to 7, and store them in a variable named xid?
I could manually put each byte into an array:
byte[] xid = new byte[4];
xid[0] = buf[4];
xid[1] = buf[5];
xid[2] = buf[6];
xid[3] = buf[7];
But that's just tedious, and impractical for fields that are hundreds of bytes in length. The String class can parse substrings given an offset and length; is there a similar method for byte arrays in Java?
Or am I somehow making things difficult for myself?

Wrap the byte array in a ByteArrayOutputStream; wrap a DataInputStream around that; then use the methods of DataInputStream.

The cleanest way to do something like this is probably to use the utility method Arrays.copyOfRange.

What you do is write yourself some helper methods to extract 2 byte, 4 byte, etc values from the packet, reading the bytes and assembling them into Java short, int or whatever values.
For example
public short getShort(byte[] buffer, int offset) {
return (short) ((buffer[offset] << 8) | buffer[offset + 1]);
}
Then you use these helper methods as often as you need to. (If you want to be fancy, you could have the methods update an attribute that holds the current position, so that you don't have to pass an offset argument.)
Alternatively, if you were not worried by the overheads, you could wrap the byte array in ByteArrayInputStream and a DataInputStream, and use the latter's API to read bytes, shorts, ints, and so on. IIRC, DataInputStream assumes that numbers are represented in the stream in "network byte order" ... which is almost certainly what the DHCP spec mandates.

I'm a bit late to this, but there's a ByteBuffer class:
ByteBuffer b = ByteBuffer.wrap(request.getData());
byte opcode = b.get();
byte hwtype = b.get();
byte hw_addr_len = b.get();
byte hops = b.get();
int xid = b.getInt();
short seconds = b.getShort();
Or, if you only need a single field:
ByteBuffer b = ByteBuffer.wrap(request.getData());
int xid = b.getInt(4);

Addup differently byte-sized fields in Java?

I am coding some sort of packet which has different fields with different length in bytes.
So field1 is 2 byte long field2 is 3 bytes long field3 is 6 bytes long and when I addup these fields, I should be getting 11 bytes in length.
But I have no idea how I can declare something with this byte long.

Use an array:
byte[] byteArray = new byte[11];

How's about:
byte[] arr = new byte[11];

You could use a class to represent your packet:
public class Packet
{
public byte[] Field1, Field2, Field3;
public Packet(byte[] packetBytes)
{
ByteBuffer packet = ByteBuffer.wrap(packetBytes);
Field1 = new byte[2];
Field2 = new byte[3];
Field3 = new byte[6];
packet.get(Field1, 0, 2);
packet.get(Field2, 2, 3);
packet.get(Field3, 5, 6);
}
}
ByteBuffer is good for byte-manipulation.

I have found that java.nio.ByteBuffer is typically better for this sort of thing. It has nice methods for dealing with interpreting the bytes in the buffer. The docs are here.
import java.nio.ByteBuffer;
ByteBuffer buffer = ByteBuffer.allocate(11);
Check out the docs and look at the nice methods such as getInt() and getChar().

Java has a limited collection of primitive types, which all have a fixed size. You can see a list of them here. That means you can't decide how many bytes your variable will consist of.
Of course, as others have already mentioned, you can always create a new byte[11]. Note that Java's byte is signed, however. It goes from -128 to 127, not from 0 to 255.

I recommend the utility classes in Javolution for dealing with binary protocol streams such as this. They've come in handy for me several times when dealing with low-level binary streams.

You should probably design your code to separate the message you want to manipulate in java from the wire level format you need to read/write.
e.g. If you have a ScreenResolution concept, you could represent it in java with a ScreenResolution class:
public class ScreenResolution {
public int height;
public int width;
}
This class is easy to work with in Java. Transforming this to a packet that can be transmitted over a network/saved to a file, etc. according to some file format or protocol is another concern.
Say the height and width is to be laid out in 3 bytes each, with some ID and length for the "wire format", you make something like
public byte[] marshalScreenResolution(ScreenResolution obj) {
byte[] buf = new byte[9];
//length of this packet, 2 bytes
buf[0] = 0;
buf[1] = 9;
buf[2] = SCREENRESOLUTION_OPCODE;
//marshal the height/width , 3 least significant bytes.
buf[3] = (obj.height&0xff0000) >> 16;
buf[4] = (obj.height&0x00ff00) >> 8;
buf[5] = (obj.height&0x0000ff) ;
buf[6] = (obj.width&0xff0000) >> 16;
buf[7] = (obj.width&0x00ff00) >> 8;
buf[8] = (obj.width&0x0000ff) ;
return buf;
}
And you make a demarshalScreenResolution function for going from a packet to a ScreenResolution object. The point is you decouple the representation in java from the external representation, and you assemble the fields in the external representation using bytes + some basic bit fiddling.