public static String getContentCharSet(HttpEntity entity) throws ParseException 
{
        if (entity == null) {
            throw new IllegalArgumentException("HTTP entity may not be null");
        }
        String charset = null;
        if (entity.getContentType() != null) { 
            HeaderElement values[] = entity.getContentType().getElements();
            if (values.length  > 0) {
                NameValuePair param = values[0].getParameterByName("charset");
                if (param != null) {
                    charset = param.getValue();
                }
            }
        }
        return charset;
}

Obtains character set of the entity, if known.

 public static byte[] toByteArray(HttpEntity entity) throws IOException 
{
        if (entity == null) {
            throw new IllegalArgumentException("HTTP entity may not be null");
        }
        InputStream instream = entity.getContent();
        if (instream == null) {
            return new byte[] {};
        }
        if (entity.getContentLength()  > Integer.MAX_VALUE) {
            throw new IllegalArgumentException("HTTP entity too large to be buffered in memory");
        }
        int i = (int)entity.getContentLength();
        if (i <  0) {
            i = 4096;
        }
        ByteArrayBuffer buffer = new ByteArrayBuffer(i);
        try {
            byte[] tmp = new byte[4096];
            int l;
            while((l = instream.read(tmp)) != -1) {
                buffer.append(tmp, 0, l);
            }
        } finally {
            instream.close();
        }
        return buffer.toByteArray();
}

Read the contents of an entity and return it as a byte array.

 public static String toString(HttpEntity entity) throws IOException, ParseException 
{
        return toString(entity, null);
}

Read the contents of an entity and return it as a String. The content is converted using the character set from the entity (if any), failing that, "ISO-8859-1" is used.

 public static String toString(HttpEntity entity,
    String defaultCharset) throws IOException, ParseException 
{
        if (entity == null) {
            throw new IllegalArgumentException("HTTP entity may not be null");
        }
        InputStream instream = entity.getContent();
        if (instream == null) {
            return "";
        }
        if (entity.getContentLength()  > Integer.MAX_VALUE) {
            throw new IllegalArgumentException("HTTP entity too large to be buffered in memory");
        }
        int i = (int)entity.getContentLength();
        if (i <  0) {
            i = 4096;
        }
        String charset = getContentCharSet(entity);
        if (charset == null) {
            charset = defaultCharset;
        }
        if (charset == null) {
            charset = HTTP.DEFAULT_CONTENT_CHARSET;
        }
        Reader reader = new InputStreamReader(instream, charset);
        CharArrayBuffer buffer = new CharArrayBuffer(i); 
        try {
            char[] tmp = new char[1024];
            int l;
            while((l = reader.read(tmp)) != -1) {
                buffer.append(tmp, 0, l);
            }
        } finally {
            reader.close();
        }
        return buffer.toString();
}

Get the entity content as a String, using the provided default character set if none is found in the entity. If defaultCharset is null, the default "ISO-8859-1" is used.