Downloaded images aren't viewable

So I have this code which downloads the source of an image and then writes it into a file.

It works fine, except for the fact that the created files aren't viewable. Using windows viewer, it gives me an "Image can't be constructed" error.

Code:

Code:

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try {
        URL URL = new URL(ImageLink);
        HttpURLConnection huc = (HttpURLConnection)URL.openConnection();           
        huc.setRequestMethod("GET");
        huc.setRequestProperty("User-Agent", "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; JVM)");                       
        huc.setRequestProperty("Pragma", "no-cache");
        huc.connect();
        BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(huc.getInputStream()));
        String line = null;
        String source = "";
       
        while ((line = reader.readLine()) != null) {
          source += line; //Store the entire source of the image in a variable.
        }
        try {
                Pattern p = Pattern.compile("/([\\d]*.[\\w]{2,4})$"); //Extract filename from the image URL
                Matcher m = p.matcher(ImageLink);
                m.find();
                String filepath = "E:\\wamp\\www\\images\\" + m.group(1);
                File file = new File(filepath); //Create a file at E:/wamp/www/images
                BufferedWriter out = new BufferedWriter(new FileWriter(file));
                out.write(source); //Write the downloaded source to the file.
                out.close();
        } catch (IOException e) {
                System.err.println("General Exception " + e);
                e.printStackTrace();
        }
}
catch(IOException ioe) {
        ioe.printStackTrace();
}
catch(Exception e) {
        System.err.println("General Exception " + e);
                e.printStackTrace();
        }
}

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Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong?

Thanks.

Most images are binary data. Treating binary bytes as characters with lineends etc will not restore the image's bytes to their original values.
Try reading the image's bytes as bytes vs as String

Ah right, thanks.

How would I go about doing that? just change the variable type of source, or something else?

Change the class that reads from the InputStream.

I've done a bit of googling, and most sites I find use something similar to this for reading files as bytes. These methods however only seem to work for files which are on the same computer as the program.

How would I do this reading from a file on the internet? (so basically just downloading an image from a webpage)

Quote:

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huc.getInputStream()

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this call returns an InputStream. You can read the bytes from that, and write them to a file.

I'm sorry, I just don't get how to read from the inputstream into something other than a string.

Could you give an example?

I'm sorry if I'm asking stupid things here, I'm just having a very hard time wrapping my mind around this byte concept.

Look at the API doc for the InputStream class.

Search this forum (or google) for 'getInputStream('
or for '.read('

But how does that work? Seeing how getInputStream returns a character based stream rather than a byte based stream.

Also, out.write(source); doesn't seem to like byte[] very much.

First off, as said, you want to use the InputStream directly.
Second, you want to use a FileOutputStream, which deals with byte[]'s.

So, for reading, you'll generally read into a byte[] of some size...8k is one I often see (so 8192 in size). Note the number of bytes read on each read, because you may not read a full 8192 bytes each time, and you'll want to tell the output stream how much you're writing.

After each read, write the byte[] out.

Quote:

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doesn't seem to like

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Please post full content of any error messages here.

The method write(int) in the type BufferedWriter is not applicable for the arguments (byte[])

I guess I have to use something as FileOutputStream

Readers and Writers are for characters.
Input and Output Streams are for bytes.