以下是我经过一些实验后提出的最优雅、纯Java（无库）解决方案：

public static String fromStream(InputStream in) throws IOException
{
    BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(in));
    StringBuilder out = new StringBuilder();
    String newLine = System.getProperty("line.separator");
    String line;
    while ((line = reader.readLine()) != null) {
        out.append(line);
        out.append(newLine);
    }
    return out.toString();
}

如果需要将字符串转换为没有外部库的特定字符集，则：

public String convertStreamToString(InputStream is) throws IOException {
  try (ByteArrayOutputStream baos = new ByteArrayOutputStream();) {
    is.transferTo(baos);
    return baos.toString(StandardCharsets.UTF_8);
  }
}

这是我的基于Java 8的解决方案，它使用新的流API来收集InputStream中的所有行：

public static String toString(InputStream inputStream) {
    BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(
        new InputStreamReader(inputStream));
    return reader.lines().collect(Collectors.joining(
        System.getProperty("line.separator")));
}

这个问题的解决方案不是最简单的，但由于没有提到NIO流和通道，这里有一个使用NIO通道和ByteBuffer将流转换为字符串的版本。

public static String streamToStringChannel(InputStream in, String encoding, int bufSize) throws IOException {
    ReadableByteChannel channel = Channels.newChannel(in);
    ByteBuffer byteBuffer = ByteBuffer.allocate(bufSize);
    ByteArrayOutputStream bout = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
    WritableByteChannel outChannel = Channels.newChannel(bout);
    while (channel.read(byteBuffer) > 0 || byteBuffer.position() > 0) {
        byteBuffer.flip();  //make buffer ready for write
        outChannel.write(byteBuffer);
        byteBuffer.compact(); //make buffer ready for reading
    }
    channel.close();
    outChannel.close();
    return bout.toString(encoding);
}

下面是如何使用它的示例：

try (InputStream in = new FileInputStream("/tmp/large_file.xml")) {
    String x = streamToStringChannel(in, "UTF-8", 1);
    System.out.println(x);
}

对于大型文件，此方法的性能应该很好。

使用java 9中支持的java.io.InputStream.transferTo（OutputStream）和ByteArrayOutputStream.toString（String），该字符串采用字符集名称：

public static String gobble(InputStream in, String charsetName) throws IOException {
    ByteArrayOutputStream bos = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
    in.transferTo(bos);
    return bos.toString(charsetName);
}

此代码适用于新的Java学习者：

private String textDataFromFile;

public String getFromFile(InputStream myInputStream) throws FileNotFoundException, IOException {

    BufferedReader bufferReader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(myInputStream));

    StringBuilder stringBuilder = new StringBuilder();

    String eachStringLine;

    while ((eachStringLine = bufferReader.readLine()) != null) {
        stringBuilder.append(eachStringLine).append("\n");
    }
    textDataFromFile = stringBuilder.toString();

    return textDataFromFile;
}