Convert a byte array to integer in Java and vice versa

Question

Use the classes found in the java.nio namespace, in particular, the ByteBuffer. It can do all the work for you.

byte[] arr = { 0x00, 0x01 };
ByteBuffer wrapped = ByteBuffer.wrap(arr); // big-endian by default
short num = wrapped.getShort(); // 1

ByteBuffer dbuf = ByteBuffer.allocate(2);
dbuf.putShort(num);
byte[] bytes = dbuf.array(); // { 0, 1 }

byte[] toByteArray(int value) {
     return  ByteBuffer.allocate(4).putInt(value).array();
}

byte[] toByteArray(int value) {
    return new byte[] { 
        (byte)(value >> 24),
        (byte)(value >> 16),
        (byte)(value >> 8),
        (byte)value };
}

int fromByteArray(byte[] bytes) {
     return ByteBuffer.wrap(bytes).getInt();
}
// packing an array of 4 bytes to an int, big endian, minimal parentheses
// operator precedence: <<, &, | 
// when operators of equal precedence (here bitwise OR) appear in the same expression, they are evaluated from left to right
int fromByteArray(byte[] bytes) {
     return bytes[0] << 24 | (bytes[1] & 0xFF) << 16 | (bytes[2] & 0xFF) << 8 | (bytes[3] & 0xFF);
}

// packing an array of 4 bytes to an int, big endian, clean code
int fromByteArray(byte[] bytes) {
     return ((bytes[0] & 0xFF) << 24) | 
            ((bytes[1] & 0xFF) << 16) | 
            ((bytes[2] & 0xFF) << 8 ) | 
            ((bytes[3] & 0xFF) << 0 );
}

When packing signed bytes into an int, each byte needs to be masked off because it is sign-extended to 32 bits (rather than zero-extended) due to the arithmetic promotion rule (described in JLS, Conversions and Promotions).

There's an interesting puzzle related to this described in Java Puzzlers ("A Big Delight in Every Byte") by Joshua Bloch and Neal Gafter . When comparing a byte value to an int value, the byte is sign-extended to an int and then this value is compared to the other int

byte[] bytes = (…)
if (bytes[0] == 0xFF) {
   // dead code, bytes[0] is in the range [-128,127] and thus never equal to 255
}

Note that all numeric types are signed in Java with exception to char being a 16-bit unsigned integer type.

You can also use BigInteger for variable length bytes. You can convert it to long, int or short, whichever suits your needs.

new BigInteger(bytes).intValue();

or to denote polarity:

new BigInteger(1, bytes).intValue();

To get bytes back just:

new BigInteger(bytes).toByteArray()

A basic implementation would be something like this:

public class Test {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        int[] input = new int[] { 0x1234, 0x5678, 0x9abc };
        byte[] output = new byte[input.length * 2];

        for (int i = 0, j = 0; i < input.length; i++, j+=2) {
            output[j] = (byte)(input[i] & 0xff);
            output[j+1] = (byte)((input[i] >> 8) & 0xff);
        }

        for (int i = 0; i < output.length; i++)
            System.out.format("%02x\n",output[i]);
    }
}

In order to understand things you can read this WP article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endianness

The above source code will output 34 12 78 56 bc 9a. The first 2 bytes (34 12) represent the first integer, etc. The above source code encodes integers in little endian format.