Charset.encode() - Method to Encode Characters

This section provides a tutorial example on how to encode characters with a given encoding using different encoding methods provided by JDK: Charset.encode(), CharsetEncoder.encode(), String.getBytes(), OutputStreamWriter.write().

There are 4 methods provided by JDK to encode characters:

Here is a program that demonstrates how to encode characters using each of the above 4 methods:

/* EncodingSampler.java
 * Copyright (c) HerongYang.com. All Rights Reserved.
 */
import java.io.*;
import java.nio.*;
import java.nio.charset.*;
class EncodingSampler {
   static String dfltCharset = null;
   static char[] chars={0x0000, 0x003F, 0x0040, 0x007F, 0x0080, 0x00BF,
                        0x00C0, 0x00FF, 0x0100, 0x3FFF, 0x4000, 0x7FFF,
                        0x8000, 0xBFFF, 0xC000, 0xEFFF, 0xF000, 0xFFFF};
   static char hexDigit[] = {'0', '1', '2', '3', '4', '5', '6', '7',
                             '8', '9', 'A', 'B', 'C', 'D', 'E', 'F'};
   public static void main(String[] arg) {
      String charset = null;
      if (arg.length>0) charset = arg[0];
      OutputStreamWriter o = new OutputStreamWriter(
         new ByteArrayOutputStream());
      dfltCharset = o.getEncoding();
      if (charset==null) System.out.println("Default ("+dfltCharset
         +") encoding:");
      else System.out.println(charset+" encoding:");
      System.out.println("Char, String, Writer, Charset, Encoder");
      for (int i=0; i<chars.length; i++) {
         char c = chars[i];
         byte[] b1 = encodeByString(c,charset);
         byte[] b2 = encodeByWriter(c,charset);
         byte[] b3 = encodeByCharset(c,charset);
         byte[] b4 = encodeByEncoder(c,charset);
         System.out.print(charToHex(c)+",");
         printBytes(b1);
         System.out.print(",");
         printBytes(b2);
         System.out.print(",");
         printBytes(b3);
         System.out.print(",");
         printBytes(b4);
         System.out.println("");
      }
   }
   public static byte[] encodeByCharset(char c, String cs) {
      Charset cso = null;
      byte[] b = null;
      try {
         if (cs==null) cso = Charset.forName(dfltCharset);
         else cso = Charset.forName(cs);
         ByteBuffer bb = cso.encode(String.valueOf(c));
         b = copyBytes(bb.array(),bb.limit());
      } catch (IllegalCharsetNameException e) {
         System.out.println(e.toString());
      }
      return b;
   }
   public static byte[] encodeByEncoder(char c, String cs) {
      Charset cso = null;
      byte[] b = null;
      try {
         if (cs==null) cso = Charset.forName(dfltCharset);
         else cso = Charset.forName(cs);
         CharsetEncoder e =  cso.newEncoder();
         e.reset();
         ByteBuffer bb = e.encode(CharBuffer.wrap(new char[] {c}));
         b = copyBytes(bb.array(),bb.limit());
      } catch (IllegalCharsetNameException e) {
         System.out.println(e.toString());
      } catch (CharacterCodingException e) {
         //System.out.println(e.toString());
         b = new byte[] {(byte)0x00};
      }
      return b;
   }
   public static byte[] encodeByString(char c, String cs) {
      String s = String.valueOf(c);
      byte[] b = null;
      if (cs==null) {
         b = s.getBytes();
      } else {
         try {
            b = s.getBytes(cs);
         } catch (UnsupportedEncodingException e) {
            System.out.println(e.toString());
         }
      }
      return b;
   }
   public static byte[] encodeByWriter(char c, String cs) {
      byte[] b = null;
      ByteArrayOutputStream bs = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
      OutputStreamWriter o = null;
      if (cs==null) {
         o = new OutputStreamWriter(bs);
      } else {
         try {
            o = new OutputStreamWriter(bs, cs);
         } catch (UnsupportedEncodingException e) {
            System.out.println(e.toString());
         }
      }
      String s = String.valueOf(c);
      try {
         o.write(s);
         o.flush();
         b = bs.toByteArray();
         o.close();
      } catch (IOException e) {
         System.out.println(e.toString());
      }
      return b;
   }
   public static byte[] copyBytes(byte[] a, int l) {
      byte[] b = new byte[l];
      for (int i=0; i<Math.min(l,a.length); i++) b[i] = a[i];
      return b;
   }
   public static void printBytes(byte[] b) {
      for (int j=0; j<b.length; j++)
         System.out.print(" "+byteToHex(b[j]));
   }
   public static String byteToHex(byte b) {
      char[] a = { hexDigit[(b >> 4) & 0x0f], hexDigit[b & 0x0f] };
      return new String(a);
   }
   public static String charToHex(char c) {
      byte hi = (byte) (c >>> 8);
      byte lo = (byte) (c & 0xff);
      return byteToHex(hi) + byteToHex(lo);
   }
}

Note that:

See sections below for testing results of different commonly used character encodings.

Table of Contents

 About This JDK Tutorial Book

 JDK (Java Development Kit)

 Java Date-Time API

 Date, Time and Calendar Classes

 Date and Time Object and String Conversion

 Number Object and Numeric String Conversion

 Locales, Localization Methods and Resource Bundles

 Calling and Importing Classes Defined in Unnamed Packages

 HashSet, Vector, HashMap and Collection Classes

Character Set Encoding Classes and Methods

 What Is Character Encoding?

 Supported Character Encodings in JDK

Charset.encode() - Method to Encode Characters

 Running EncodingSampler.java with CP1252 Encoding

 Running EncodingSampler.java with ISO-8859-1 and US-ASCII

 Running EncodingSampler.java with UTF-8, UTF-16, UTF16-BE

 Running EncodingSampler.java with GB18030

 Charset.decode() - Method to Decode Byte Sequences

 Character Set Encoding Maps

 Encoding Conversion Programs for Encoded Text Files

 Java Logging

 Socket Network Communication

 Datagram Network Communication

 DOM (Document Object Model) - API for XML Files

 SAX (Simple API for XML)

 DTD (Document Type Definition) - XML Validation

 XSD (XML Schema Definition) - XML Validation

 XSL (Extensible Stylesheet Language)

 Message Digest Algorithm Implementations in JDK

 Private key and Public Key Pair Generation

 PKCS#8/X.509 Private/Public Encoding Standards

 Digital Signature Algorithm and Sample Program

 "keytool" Commands and "keystore" Files

 KeyStore and Certificate Classes

 Secret Key Generation and Management

 Cipher - Encryption and Decryption

 The SSL (Secure Socket Layer) Protocol

 SSL Socket Communication Testing Programs

 SSL Client Authentication

 HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure)

 Outdated Tutorials

 References

 Full Version in PDF/EPUB