Converting UTF8 Encoded String to Bytes[]

I think every developer faced this problem of converting Unicode encoded string to Bytes[] . But .Net Framework has a very rich support for converting Encoded String to Bytes[].  .Net Framework support following 4 Encoding which is inherited from Base class Encoding (For Details – http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.text.encoding(VS.71).aspx )

1.       System.Text.ASCIIEncoding – Encodes characters as 7Bit ASCII character

2.       System.Text.UnicodeEncoding – Encode characters in 2 consecutive Bytes enabling support for Big Endean or Little Endean.

3.       System.Text.UTF7Encoding – Encode characters in UTF7

4.       System.Text.UTF8Encoding-– Encode characters in UTF8

Now, let’s consider our text to be UTF8 encoded like

StringBuilder _TextBuilder = new StringBuilder(223);           
_TextBuilder.AppendFormat(@”<?xml version=””1.0″” encoding=””UTF-8″”?>{0}”, Environment.NewLine);            _TextBuilder.AppendFormat(@”<Contents Type=””string””><![CDATA[• das sfas fdasfs afdasfasd fasd hg kjh klhhjn “);           
_TextBuilder.AppendFormat(@”fdhæfdhj fdh.lfjnhfjk.lnh fdæjlf hlæfjhnf læhfj hglæjælfdh{0}”, Environment.NewLine);           
_TextBuilder.AppendFormat(@”hfdj  fdklhjfdh]]></Contents>”);
string pdfDirectorXml = _TextBuilder.ToString();

The String pdfDirectorXml contains some unicode charecters with classic Bell Charecter also.The easiest way to convert UTF8 encoded text to Binary –

      UTF8Encoding encoding = new UTF8Encoding();
      byte[] bytes = encoding.GetBytes(pdfDirectorXml);

Hence, you can get the UTF-8 encoded byte[] representation of the string. J