How to clone an InputStream?

Question

If all you want to do is read the same information more than once, and the input data is small enough to fit into memory, you can copy the data from your InputStream to a ByteArrayOutputStream.

Then you can obtain the associated array of bytes and open as many "cloned" ByteArrayInputStreams as you like.

ByteArrayOutputStream baos = new ByteArrayOutputStream();

// Code simulating the copy
// You could alternatively use NIO
// And please, unlike me, do something about the Exceptions :D
byte[] buffer = new byte[1024];
int len;
while ((len = input.read(buffer)) > -1 ) {
    baos.write(buffer, 0, len);
}
baos.flush();
    
// Open new InputStreams using recorded bytes
// Can be repeated as many times as you wish
InputStream is1 = new ByteArrayInputStream(baos.toByteArray()); 
InputStream is2 = new ByteArrayInputStream(baos.toByteArray()); 

But if you really need to keep the original stream open to receive new data, then you will need to track the external call to close(). You will need to prevent close() from being called somehow.

UPDATE (2019):

Since Java 9 the the middle bits can be replaced with InputStream.transferTo:

ByteArrayOutputStream baos = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
input.transferTo(baos);
InputStream firstClone = new ByteArrayInputStream(baos.toByteArray()); 
InputStream secondClone = new ByteArrayInputStream(baos.toByteArray()); 

You want to use Apache's CloseShieldInputStream:

This is a wrapper that will prevent the stream from being closed. You'd do something like this.

InputStream is = null;

is = getStream(); //obtain the stream 
CloseShieldInputStream csis = new CloseShieldInputStream(is);

// call the bad function that does things it shouldn't
badFunction(csis);

// happiness follows: do something with the original input stream
is.read();

You can't clone it, and how you are going to solve your problem depends on what the source of the data is.

One solution is to read all data from the InputStream into a byte array, and then create a ByteArrayInputStream around that byte array, and pass that input stream into your method.

Edit 1: That is, if the other method also needs to read the same data. I.e you want to "reset" the stream.

If the data read from the stream is large, I would recommend using a TeeInputStream from Apache Commons IO. That way you can essentially replicate the input and pass a t'd pipe as your clone.

This might not work in all situations, but here is what I did: I extended the FilterInputStream class and do the required processing of the bytes as the external lib reads the data.

public class StreamBytesWithExtraProcessingInputStream extends FilterInputStream {

    protected StreamBytesWithExtraProcessingInputStream(InputStream in) {
        super(in);
    }

    @Override
    public int read() throws IOException {
        int readByte = super.read();
        processByte(readByte);
        return readByte;
    }

    @Override
    public int read(byte[] buffer, int offset, int count) throws IOException {
        int readBytes = super.read(buffer, offset, count);
        processBytes(buffer, offset, readBytes);
        return readBytes;
    }

    private void processBytes(byte[] buffer, int offset, int readBytes) {
       for (int i = 0; i < readBytes; i++) {
           processByte(buffer[i + offset]);
       }
    }

    private void processByte(int readByte) {
       // TODO do processing here
    }

}

Then you simply pass an instance of StreamBytesWithExtraProcessingInputStream where you would have passed in the input stream. With the original input stream as constructor parameter.

It should be noted that this works byte for byte, so don't use this if high performance is a requirement.

UPD. Check the comment before. It isn't exactly what was asked.

If you are using apache.commons you may copy streams using IOUtils .

You can use following code:

InputStream = IOUtils.toBufferedInputStream(toCopy);

Here is the full example suitable for your situation:

public void cloneStream() throws IOException{
    InputStream toCopy=IOUtils.toInputStream("aaa");
    InputStream dest= null;
    dest=IOUtils.toBufferedInputStream(toCopy);
    toCopy.close();
    String result = new String(IOUtils.toByteArray(dest));
    System.out.println(result);
}

This code requires some dependencies:

MAVEN

<dependency>
    <groupId>commons-io</groupId>
    <artifactId>commons-io</artifactId>
    <version>2.4</version>
</dependency>

GRADLE

'commons-io:commons-io:2.4'

Here is the DOC reference for this method:

Fetches entire contents of an InputStream and represent same data as result InputStream. This method is useful where,

Source InputStream is slow. It has network resources associated, so we cannot keep it open for long time. It has network timeout associated.

You can find more about IOUtils here: http://commons.apache.org/proper/commons-io/javadocs/api-2.4/org/apache/commons/io/IOUtils.html#toBufferedInputStream(java.io.InputStream)