Convert a binary NodeJS Buffer to JavaScript Array

Question

How can I convert a NodeJS binary buffer into a JavaScript ArrayBuffer?

Answer 1

1. A Buffer is just a view for looking into an ArrayBuffer.

A Buffer, in fact, is a FastBuffer, which extends (inherits from) Uint8Array, which is an octet-unit view (“partial accessor”) of the actual memory, an ArrayBuffer.

  

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Answer 2

You can think of an ArrayBuffer as a typed Buffer.

An ArrayBuffer therefore always needs a type (the so-called "Array Buffer View"). Typically, the Array Buffer View has a type of Uint8Array or Uint16Array.

There is a good article from Renato Mangini on converting between an ArrayBuffer and a String.

I have summarized the essential parts in a code example (for Node.js). It also shows how to convert between the typed ArrayBuffer and the untyped Buffer.

function stringToArrayBuffer(string) {
  const arrayBuffer = new ArrayBuffer(string.length);
  const arrayBufferView = new Uint8Array(arrayBuffer);
  for (let i = 0; i < string.length; i++) {
    arrayBufferView[i] = string.charCodeAt(i);
  }
  return arrayBuffer;
}

function arrayBufferToString(buffer) {
  return String.fromCharCode.apply(null, new Uint8Array(buffer));
}

const helloWorld = stringToArrayBuffer('Hello, World!'); // "ArrayBuffer" (Uint8Array)
const encodedString = new Buffer(helloWorld).toString('base64'); // "string"
const decodedBuffer = Buffer.from(encodedString, 'base64'); // "Buffer"
const decodedArrayBuffer = new Uint8Array(decodedBuffer).buffer; // "ArrayBuffer" (Uint8Array)

console.log(arrayBufferToString(decodedArrayBuffer)); // prints "Hello, World!"

Answer 3

I have already update my node to Version 5.0.0 And I work work with this:

function toArrayBuffer(buffer){
    var array = [];
    var json = buffer.toJSON();
    var list = json.data

    for(var key in list){
        array.push(fixcode(list[key].toString(16)))
    }

    function fixcode(key){
        if(key.length==1){
            return '0'+key.toUpperCase()
        }else{
            return key.toUpperCase()
        }
    }

    return array
}

I use it to check my vhd disk image.

Answer 4

• No dependencies, fastest, node 4.x and later

Buffers are Uint8Arrays, so you just need to access its ArrayBuffer. This is O(1):

 // node buffer
var b = new Buffer(512);
 // ArrayBuffer
var ab = b.buffer.slice(b.byteOffset, b.byteOffset + b.byteLength);
 // TypedArray
var ui32 = new Uint32Array(b.buffer, b.byteOffset, b.byteLength / Uint32Array.BYTES_PER_ELEMENT);

The slice and offset stuff is required because small Buffers (<4096 bytes, I think) are views on a shared ArrayBuffer. Without it you might end up with an ArrayBuffer containing data from another TypedArray.

• No dependencies, moderate speed, any version of node

Use Martin Thomson's answer, which runs in O(n) time. (See also my replies to comments on his answer about non-optimizations. Using a DataView is slow. Even if you need to flip bytes, there are faster ways to do so.)

• Dependency, fast, any version of node

You can use https://www.npmjs.com/package/memcpy to go in either direction (Buffer to ArrayBuffer and back). It's faster than the other answers posted here and is a well-written library. Node 0.12 through iojs 3.x require ngossen's fork (see this).

Answer 5

Instances of Buffer are also instances of Uint8Array in node.js 4.x and higher. Thus, the most efficient solution is to access the buf.buffer property directly, as per https://stackoverflow.com/a/31394257/1375574. The Buffer constructor also takes an ArrayBufferView argument if you need to go the other direction.

Note that this will not create a copy, which means that writes to any ArrayBufferView will write through to the original Buffer instance.

---

In older versions, node.js has both ArrayBuffer as part of v8, but the Buffer class provides a more flexible API. In order to read or write to an ArrayBuffer, you only need to create a view and copy across.

From Buffer to ArrayBuffer:

function toArrayBuffer(buf) {
    var ab = new ArrayBuffer(buf.length);
    var view = new Uint8Array(ab);
    for (var i = 0; i < buf.length; ++i) {
        view[i] = buf[i];
    }
    return ab;
}

From ArrayBuffer to Buffer:

function toBuffer(ab) {
    var buf = new Buffer(ab.byteLength);
    var view = new Uint8Array(ab);
    for (var i = 0; i < buf.length; ++i) {
        buf[i] = view[i];
    }
    return buf;
}

Answer 6

NodeJS, at one point (I think it was v0.6.x) had ArrayBuffer support. I created a small library for base64 encoding and decoding here, but since updating to v0.7, the tests (on NodeJS) fail. I'm thinking of creating something that normalizes this, but till then, I suppose Node's native Buffer should be used.