Convert a binary NodeJS Buffer to JavaScript ArrayBuffer

Question

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

Answer 1

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.

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