[FIXED] Parse Binary Data

Issue

I have an application that receives data in binary form through Bluetooth. I read the data using inputstream from a bluetoothsocket to a byte[]. But I must parse all messages, because they must have a given format to be valid. All messages are in binary.

My solution was to convert the byte[] to a string and then split the string and parse all received messages.

An example of the data to parse: 0000000010000001

I should know that the first 8 zeros are the header and 10000001 the real data.

My idea was to create a string (from the byte[]) that represents -> 0000000010000001 using new String(byte[]) and then split the whole string in one byte and check the value, like:

string1 had 00000000 string2 had 10000001

I know that 8 zeros are the header, therefore string2 has the representation of the data.

My question is about the efficiency of this method. Is this the best method to do this in a mobile environment?

Solution

String manipulation for parsing binary data is quite inefficient in terms of speed, memory consumption and also puts quite some burden on the garbage collector - because you always generate new string objects and forget them immediately.

In Java you have several choices to do it better:

• DataInputStream: is a wrapper for an InputStream where you read bytes, shorts, longs, doubles, etc directly from the stream.
• NIO using ByteBuffers and "derived" types like ShortBuffer... these are good for bulkd data transfers and also for binary parsing.

As long as your data is byte-aligned, these are easy ways to go. If that's not the case - well, then better learn how to do bit-manipulation using operators like &, |, ~, <<, >>.

My suggestion is that you stick to DataInputStream as long as possible.

Answered By - A.H.
Answer Checked By - Marie Seifert (JavaFixing Admin)