Node.js buffer string serialization

Question

I want to serialize a buffer to string without any overhead ( one character for one byte) and be able to unserialize it into buffer again.

var b = new Buffer (4) ;
var s = b.toString() ;
var b2 = new Buffer (s)

Produces the same results only for values below 128. I want to use the whole scope of 0-255.

I know I can write it in a loop with String.fromCharCode() in serializing and String.charCodeAt() in deserializing, but I'm looking for some native module implementation if there is any.

There is deprecated binary encoding. But I would suggest to use base64 encoding — Alexey Ten
– Alexey Ten, Commented Jul 21, 2014 at 15:41

mscdex · Accepted Answer · 2020-12-30 00:14:40Z

9

You can use the 'latin1' encoding, but you should generally try to avoid it because converting a Buffer to a binary string has some extra computational overhead.

Example:

var b = Buffer.alloc(4);
var s = b.toString('latin1');
var b2 = Buffer.from(s, 'latin1');

edited Dec 30, 2020 at 0:14

answered Jul 21, 2014 at 15:48

mscdex

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1 Comment

shitpoet Over a year ago

The answer seems to be outdated now. node.js prints

DeprecationWarning: Buffer() is deprecated due to security and usability issues. Please use the Buffer.alloc(), Buffer.allocUnsafe(), or Buffer.from() methods instead.

new Buffer(s, 'binary') should be replaced with Buffer.from(s, 'binary'). nodejs.org/en/docs/guides/buffer-constructor-deprecation/…

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