Byte-Array to String

[Carsten Haese]

On Fri, 2007-04-20 at 14:39 +0100, Robert Rawlins - Think Blue wrote:
> Thanks for that Carsten,
> 
> I've given that a go and I still get similar results to what I've seen in the past whereby it prints a couple of elements I would expect to see but other which I'm not sure about, and what seems to be ALOT of blank characters.
> 
> 6e
>                 555     5       5       5               en      j                       5               %OBEX Object Push       ÿ
> 
> That's what your suggestion returns to me, I'm using the API to scan a Bluetooth device for services, one of which is OBEX Object Push, but the rest of that output is apparent junk.
> 
> Unfortunately the API doesn’t really give any suggestions at all, take a look here http://bluez.cvs.sourceforge.net/*checkout*/bluez/utils/hcid/dbus-api.txt if you look down under the 'adapter' section, I'm running the method called GetRemoteServiceRecord() which returns the byte array but there really isn’t any suggestion as to how you extract the information from what's returned.

It says that it returns the binary stream of an SDP database. I seems
that the writer of the API documentation assumed that you'd only ask for
such a thing if you already know what to do with it.

Directly below the GetRemoteServiceRecord method is the description of a
method called GetRemoteServiceRecordAsXML. Maybe that'll give you a more
readable result?

> 
> I have no idea if we're barking up the right tree here or if we're going about this the wrong way.

That depends entirely on what you want to achieve in the end, which I
don't think you told us. You asked how to convert a (dbus) byte array
into a string. We told you, but the result isn't as helpful as you
hoped.

Maybe the following analogy will illustrate the futility of this
process.

You: I need to get onto the roof of my house. How do I do that?
Us: Use a ladder.
You: Um, okay... Alright, thanks, I've climbed onto the roof of my
house, but I still can't reach the moon. How do I do that?

In other words, the more information you give us about what you are
actually trying to achieve, the more helpful the advice we can give you.

Good luck,

Carsten.