Utility C# Class to Convert String and Bytes

Many times I have found myself  needing to convert bytes to strings or vice-versa. This is actually pretty easy to do in C# however is very easy to forget.  Most examples usually include default encoding to their liking. I have found many times I need a different encoding and sometimes different encoding in the same project. 

Easily solved by the following example.

	using System;
	using System.Text;
	namespace BytesToStrings
	{
	class Program
	{
	static void Main(string[] args)
	{
	string convertMe = "abcdefghijKLMNOPQRSTUVXYZ12345!@#$%^&*(";
	Console.Write("Buffer converted default encoding ... ");
	byte[] testBuffer = convertMe.ConvertToBytes();
	foreach (var b in testBuffer)
	Console.Write($"{b} ");
	Console.WriteLine();
	Console.Write("Back to string ..");
	Console.WriteLine(testBuffer.ConvertToString());
	Console.Write("Buffer converted default utf_8 ... ");
	testBuffer = convertMe.ConvertToBytes(MyByteStringConverter.EncodingType.utf_8);
	foreach (var b in testBuffer)
	Console.Write($"{b} ");
	Console.WriteLine();
	Console.Write("Back to string ..");
	Console.WriteLine(testBuffer.ConvertToString(MyByteStringConverter.EncodingType.utf_8));
	Console.Read();
	}
	}
	public static class MyByteStringConverter
	{
	// Default Encoding Remove or add as needed
	public enum EncodingType
	{
	utf_16,
	utf_16BE,
	utf_32,
	utf_32BE,
	us_ascii,
	iso_8859_1,
	utf_7,
	utf_8
	}
	// Default encoding change as needed.
	private const EncodingType defaultEncodingType = EncodingType.us_ascii;
	// Converts Enumeration to Useable Encoding Name as "-" are illegal
	private static Encoding EncodingTypeToEncoding(EncodingType encodingInfo)
	{
	return Encoding.GetEncoding(Enum.GetName(typeof(EncodingType), encodingInfo).Replace("_", "-"));
	}
	// Byte[] -> String
	public static string BytesToString(byte[] bytes, EncodingType encodingInfo = defaultEncodingType)
	{
	return EncodingTypeToEncoding(encodingInfo).GetString(bytes);
	}
	// String -> Byte[]
	public static byte[] StringToBytes(string str, EncodingType encodingInfo = defaultEncodingType)
	{
	return EncodingTypeToEncoding(encodingInfo).GetBytes(str);
	}
	// Byte[] -> String extension method
	public static byte[] ConvertToBytes(this string str, EncodingType encodingInfo = defaultEncodingType)
	{
	return StringToBytes(str);
	}
	// String -> Byte[] extension method
	public static string ConvertToString(this byte[] str, EncodingType encodingInfo = defaultEncodingType)
	{
	return BytesToString(str);
	}
	}
	}

view raw BytesToStrings.cs hosted with ❤ by GitHub

The main feature of this is that a enumeration was created with the common encoding then a static variable is used to store my preferred default. If an alternative encoding is needed I just provide a optional EncodingType parameter to my preferred conversion.

Pretty useful :)