Converting large files to an array of bytes on Android

Developing for embedded systems comes with many challenges not faced when developing on say a desktop environment. The challenge I'm currently facing is to 开发者_如何学Cconvert a large file (possible 10-100MB) to an array of bytes while keeping in mind my limited resources (memory). Two implemetation I have been using both cause the dreaded

java.lang.OutOfMemoryError

I started by implemeting this myself:

   /** Converts the given File to an array of bits. */
    private byte[] fileToBytes(File file) {

        InputStream input_stream = new BufferedInputStream(new FileInputStream(file));  
        ByteArrayOutputStream buffer = new ByteArrayOutputStream();     
        byte[] data = new byte[16384]; // 16K
        int bytes_read;
        while ((bytes_read = input_stream.read(data,0,data.length)) != -1) {
           buffer.write(data, 0, bytes_read);
        }   
        input_stream.close();               
        return buffer.toByteArray();
}

Then decided to use the tried and tested Apache commons-io to handle this for me, but same error. Is this something that can be done on a mobile environment such as Android, or am I out of luck?

To convert a file into a byte array you can use DatanputStream.

byte[] lData = new byte[file_length];

DataInputStream lDataIS = new DataInputStream(InputStream);
lDataIS.readFully(lData);

To properly load big files, maybe you can read them by chunk, and using proxy objects to manipulate partially loaded files.

You can't put such a big file into memory in Android, because the heap size in Android is limited to something about 16-32MB depending on device. So, you should redesign your application somehow.