Converting between strings and ArrayBuffers

Question

Is there a commonly accepted technique for efficiently converting JavaScript strings to ArrayBuffers and vice-versa? Specifically, I\'d like to be able to write the contents

Answer 1

After playing with mangini's solution for converting from ArrayBuffer to String - ab2str (which is the most elegant and useful one I have found - thanks!), I had some issues when handling large arrays. More specefivally, calling String.fromCharCode.apply(null, new Uint16Array(buf)); throws an error:

arguments array passed to Function.prototype.apply is too large.

In order to solve it (bypass) I have decided to handle the input ArrayBuffer in chunks. So the modified solution is:

function ab2str(buf) {
   var str = "";
   var ab = new Uint16Array(buf);
   var abLen = ab.length;
   var CHUNK_SIZE = Math.pow(2, 16);
   var offset, len, subab;
   for (offset = 0; offset < abLen; offset += CHUNK_SIZE) {
      len = Math.min(CHUNK_SIZE, abLen-offset);
      subab = ab.subarray(offset, offset+len);
      str += String.fromCharCode.apply(null, subab);
   }
   return str;
}

The chunk size is set to 2^16 because this was the size I have found to work in my development landscape. Setting a higher value caused the same error to reoccur. It can be altered by setting the CHUNK_SIZE variable to a different value. It is important to have an even number.

Note on performance - I did not make any performance tests for this solution. However, since it is based on the previous solution, and can handle large arrays, I see no reason why not to use it.