EDIT (2018): The edited sibling answer by @xinyongCheng is a simpler approach, and should be the accepted answer.

Your approach would be reasonable if you knew the bytes are in the platform's default charset. In your example, this is true because k.getBytes() returns the bytes in the platform's default charset.

More frequently, you'll want to specify the encoding. However, there's a simpler way to do that than the question you linked. The String API provides methods that converts between a String and a byte[] array in a particular encoding. These methods suggest using CharsetEncoder/CharsetDecoder "when more control over the decoding [encoding] process is required."

To get the bytes from a String in a particular encoding, you can use a sibling getBytes() method:

byte[] bytes = k.getBytes( StandardCharsets.UTF_8 );

To put bytes with a particular encoding into a String, you can use a different String constructor:

String v = new String( bytes, StandardCharsets.UTF_8 );

Note that ByteBuffer.array() is an optional operation. If you've constructed your ByteBuffer with an array, you can use that array directly. Otherwise, if you want to be safe, use ByteBuffer.get(byte[] dst, int offset, int length) to get bytes from the buffer into a byte array.

Java's String class is immutable. In order to maintain this guarantee, String has to have its own reference to the char[] backing it, and nobody else may have that reference. If it were to share an array with the ByteBuffer, the String class could not guarantee that it would not be modified. In addition, char, and byte are not the same in Java.

The answer talking about setting range from position to limit is not correct in a general case. When the buffer has been partially consumed, or is referring to a part of an array (you can ByteBuffer.wrap an array at a given offset, not necessarily from the beginning), we have to account for that in our calculations. This is the general solution that works for buffers in all cases (does not cover encoding):

if (myByteBuffer.hasArray()) {
    return new String(myByteBuffer.array(),
        myByteBuffer.arrayOffset() + myByteBuffer.position(),
        myByteBuffer.remaining());
} else {
    final byte[] b = new byte[myByteBuffer.remaining()];
    myByteBuffer.duplicate().get(b);
    return new String(b);
}

For the concerns related to encoding, see Andy Thomas' answer.

Unless things have changed, you're better off with

public static ByteBuffer str_to_bb(String msg, Charset charset){
    return ByteBuffer.wrap(msg.getBytes(charset));
}

public static String bb_to_str(ByteBuffer buffer, Charset charset){
    byte[] bytes;
    if(buffer.hasArray()) {
        bytes = buffer.array();
    } else {
        bytes = new byte[buffer.remaining()];
        buffer.get(bytes);
    }
    return new String(bytes, charset);
}

Usually buffer.hasArray() will be either always true or always false depending on your use case. In practice, unless you really want it to work under any circumstances, it's safe to optimize away the branch you don't need.

Buffers are a little tricky to use as they have a current state, which you need to take into account when accessing them.

you want to put

 paramByteBuffer.flip();

before each decode to get the buffer into the state you want for the decode to read.

e.g.

ByteBuffer paramByteBuffer = ByteBuffer.allocate(100);
paramByteBuffer.put((byte)'a');  // write 'a' at next position(0)
paramByteBuffer.put((byte)'b');  // write 'b' at next position(1)
paramByteBuffer.put((byte)'c');  // write 'c' at next position(2)

// if I try to read now I will read the next byte position(3) which is empty
// so I need to flip the buffer so the next position is at the start
paramByteBuffer.flip();          

// we are at position 0 so we can do our read function
CharBuffer charBuffer = StandardCharsets.UTF_8.decode(paramByteBuffer);
String text = charBuffer.toString();
System.out.println("UTF-8" + text);

// because the decoder has read all the written bytes we are back to the
// state (position 3) we had just after we wrote the bytes in the first 
// place so we need to flip again 
paramByteBuffer.flip();

// we are now at position 0 so we can do our read function
charBuffer = StandardCharsets.UTF_16.decode(paramByteBuffer);
text = charBuffer.toString();
System.out.println("UTF_16"+text);