How to save the contents of a file(not a text file)

Question

Hi all, I want to save the contents of a file(,png file, not a text file) as a field in a class. Shall I have it as a string or byte array or something?
I have tried saving a file in a string but there were some problems with loading the file from a different platform. Following is my code.
        String string;
        try {
            StringBuffer sb = new StringBuffer(1024);
            char[] characterArray = new char[1024];
            BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(file));
            while(br.read(characterArray) != -1){
                sb.append(String.valueOf(characterArray));
            br.close();
            string= sb.toString();
        } catch (IOException ex) {
            ex.printStackTrace();
        }and I use the following code to recover the string back to a stream, and save that stream back to a time later.
    ByteArrayInputStream bais = new ByteArrayInputStream(map.getBytes());I realized that because this file is not a text file, the string could cause some problems. But anyone could tell me if I should use a byte array or someting? and how?
Any help would be appreciated!
Cheers,
Jing

Answer 1

You should use a byte array, and the binary streams (InputStream a& OutputStream). Never use Strings and Reader/Writer if you have binary data.
Kaj