替换Properties.list

Question

I need to convert Properties objects to byte[], I used

byte[] bytes = SerializationUtils.serialize(properties);

But it doesn't seem to be working well as all the data gets corrupted and I see some symbols and special charters. So I used the below approach

StringWriter writer = new StringWriter();
properties.list(new PrintWriter(writer));
String fileContent = writer.getBuffer().toString();
byte[] bytes = fileContent.getBytes();

The above approach seems to work fine, but now calling properties.list is creating some issues as I was getting some text like "-- listing properties --" on the UI side, looks like Properties list method has hardcoded above string via out.println

public void list(PrintWriter out) {
        out.println("-- listing properties --");
        Hashtable h = new Hashtable();
        enumerate(h);
        for (Enumeration e = h.keys() ; e.hasMoreElements() ;) {
            String key = (String)e.nextElement();
            String val = (String)h.get(key);
            if (val.length() > 40) {
                val = val.substring(0, 37) + "...";
            }
            out.println(key + "=" + val);
        }
    }

Is there any other better way achieve it or some replacement for Properties.list?

Answer 1

The first approach is fine.

The point is that depending on what you want to do with that binary data, further encoding is required. For example, you could use Base64 encoding to turn your bytes into something that can be "moved" around easily.