Answer by wau for How do I create a Java string from the contents of a file?

A flexible solution using IOUtils from Apache commons-io in combination with StringWriter:

Reader input = new FileReader();StringWriter output = new StringWriter();try {  IOUtils.copy(input, output);} finally {  input.close();}String fileContents = output.toString();

It works with any reader or input stream (not just with files), for example when reading from a URL.