Convert SQL Binary Data to String in C#

Question

Does anybody have sample code to convert from binary data to string in c#?

Take note here, if your data is binary because it is encrypted, you must decrypt it before you can read it's data. — rlb.usa
– rlb.usa, Commented Jun 9, 2010 at 15:32
What are you trying to accommplish? We could go about this any many ways and most will be the wrong way if we don't have more information about what you are trying to accomplish and what is in the binary data. We could decode it by parsing the data, or we could encode it in base64, or decode it to unicode. What does the binary data represent? — AaronLS
– AaronLS, Commented Jun 9, 2010 at 16:50

Koen · Accepted Answer · 2010-06-09 15:34:50Z

3

Sounds like you just need to decode the binary data. Therefore you need an encoding (like utf-8 or unicode).

Example:

var textFromBinary = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetString(myBinaryData);

answered Jun 9, 2010 at 15:34

Koen

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Comments

Anton Gogolev · Accepted Answer · 2010-06-09 15:31:59Z

1

If your binary data is stored in byte array and you want to convert it to Base64-encoding, you can use Convert.ToBase64String method:

var base64String = Convert.ToBase64String(yourBinaryDataHere);

answered Jun 9, 2010 at 15:31

Anton Gogolev

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cognophile · Accepted Answer · 2021-12-15 19:43:32Z

0

In modern versions of .NET, we can simply use the .ToString() override of BinaryData for a UTF-8 decoding of the contained bytes.

string data = myBinaryData.ToString()

answered Dec 15, 2021 at 19:43

cognophile

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