c# - Reading string as a stream without copying

Question

I have some data in a string. I have a function that takes a stream as input. I want to provide my data to my function without having to copy the complete string into a stream. Essentially I'm looking for a stream class that can wrap a string and read from it.

The only suggestions I've seen online suggest the StringReader which is NOT a stream, or creating a memory stream and writing to it, which means copying the data. I could write my own stream object but the tricky part is handling encoding because a stream deals in bytes. Is there a way to do this without writing new stream classes?

I'm implementing pipeline components in BizTalk. BizTalk deals with everything entirely with streams, so you always pass things to BizTalk in a stream. BizTalk will always read from that stream in small chunks, so it doesn't make sense to copy the entire string to a stream (especially if the string is large), if I can read from the stream how BizTalk wants it.

Answer 1

Here is a proper StringReaderStream with following drawbacks:

• The buffer for Read has to be at least maxBytesPerChar long. It's possible to implement Read for small buffers by keeping internal one char buff = new byte[maxBytesPerChar]. But's not necessary for most usages.
• No Seek, it's possible to do seek, but would be very tricky generaly. (Some seek cases, like seek to beginning, seek to end, are simple to implement. )

/// <summary>
/// Convert string to byte stream.
/// <para>
/// Slower than <see cref="Encoding.GetBytes()"/>, but saves memory for a large string.
/// </para>
/// </summary>
public class StringReaderStream : Stream
{
    private string input;
    private readonly Encoding encoding;
    private int maxBytesPerChar;
    private int inputLength;
    private int inputPosition;
    private readonly long length;
    private long position;

    public StringReaderStream(string input)
        : this(input, Encoding.UTF8)
    { }

    public StringReaderStream(string input, Encoding encoding)
    {
        this.encoding = encoding ?? throw new ArgumentNullException(nameof(encoding));
        this.input = input;
        inputLength = input == null ? 0 : input.Length;
        if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(input))
            length = encoding.GetByteCount(input);
            maxBytesPerChar = encoding == Encoding.ASCII ? 1 : encoding.GetMaxByteCount(1);
    }

    public override bool CanRead => true;

    public override bool CanSeek => false;

    public override bool CanWrite => false;

    public override long Length => length;

    public override long Position
    {
        get => position;
        set => throw new NotImplementedException();
    }

    public override void Flush()
    {
    }

    public override int Read(byte[] buffer, int offset, int count)
    {
        if (inputPosition >= inputLength)
            return 0;
        if (count < maxBytesPerChar)
            throw new ArgumentException("count has to be greater or equal to max encoding byte count per char");
        int charCount = Math.Min(inputLength - inputPosition, count / maxBytesPerChar);
        int byteCount = encoding.GetBytes(input, inputPosition, charCount, buffer, offset);
        inputPosition += charCount;
        position += byteCount;
        return byteCount;
    }

    public override long Seek(long offset, SeekOrigin origin)
    {
        throw new NotImplementedException();
    }

    public override void SetLength(long value)
    {
        throw new NotImplementedException();
    }

    public override void Write(byte[] buffer, int offset, int count)
    {
        throw new NotImplementedException();
    }
}