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

The following is a working Typescript implementation:

bufferToString(buffer: ArrayBuffer): string {
    return String.fromCharCode.apply(null, Array.from(new Uint16Array(buffer)));
}

stringToBuffer(value: string): ArrayBuffer {
    let buffer = new ArrayBuffer(value.length * 2); // 2 bytes per char
    let view = new Uint16Array(buffer);
    for (let i = 0, length = value.length; i < length; i++) {
        view[i] = value.charCodeAt(i);
    }
    return buffer;
}

I've used this for numerous operations while working with crypto.subtle.

Answer 2

In case you have binary data in a string (obtained from nodejs + readFile(..., 'binary'), or cypress + cy.fixture(..., 'binary'), etc), you can't use TextEncoder. It supports only utf8. Bytes with values >= 128 are each turned into 2 bytes.

ES2015:

a = Uint8Array.from(s, x => x.charCodeAt(0))

Uint8Array(33) [2, 134, 140, 186, 82, 70, 108, 182, 233, 40, 143, 247, 29, 76, 245, 206, 29, 87, 48, 160, 78, 225, 242, 56, 236, 201, 80, 80, 152, 118, 92, 144, 48

s = String.fromCharCode.apply(null, a)

"ºRFl¶é(÷LõÎW0 Náò8ìÉPPv\0"

Answer 3

Blob is much slower than String.fromCharCode(null,array);

but that fails if the array buffer gets too big. The best solution I have found is to use String.fromCharCode(null,array); and split it up into operations that won't blow the stack, but are faster than a single char at a time.

The best solution for large array buffer is:

function arrayBufferToString(buffer){

    var bufView = new Uint16Array(buffer);
    var length = bufView.length;
    var result = '';
    var addition = Math.pow(2,16)-1;

    for(var i = 0;i<length;i+=addition){

        if(i + addition > length){
            addition = length - i;
        }
        result += String.fromCharCode.apply(null, bufView.subarray(i,i+addition));
    }

    return result;

}

I found this to be about 20 times faster than using blob. It also works for large strings of over 100mb.

Answer 4

Based on the answer of gengkev, I created functions for both ways, because BlobBuilder can handle String and ArrayBuffer:

function string2ArrayBuffer(string, callback) {
    var bb = new BlobBuilder();
    bb.append(string);
    var f = new FileReader();
    f.onload = function(e) {
        callback(e.target.result);
    }
    f.readAsArrayBuffer(bb.getBlob());
}

and

function arrayBuffer2String(buf, callback) {
    var bb = new BlobBuilder();
    bb.append(buf);
    var f = new FileReader();
    f.onload = function(e) {
        callback(e.target.result)
    }
    f.readAsText(bb.getBlob());
}

A simple test:

string2ArrayBuffer("abc",
    function (buf) {
        var uInt8 = new Uint8Array(buf);
        console.log(uInt8); // Returns `Uint8Array { 0=97, 1=98, 2=99}`

        arrayBuffer2String(buf, 
            function (string) {
                console.log(string); // returns "abc"
            }
        )
    }
)

Answer 5

From emscripten:

function stringToUTF8Array(str, outU8Array, outIdx, maxBytesToWrite) {
  if (!(maxBytesToWrite > 0)) return 0;
  var startIdx = outIdx;
  var endIdx = outIdx + maxBytesToWrite - 1;
  for (var i = 0; i < str.length; ++i) {
    var u = str.charCodeAt(i);
    if (u >= 55296 && u <= 57343) {
      var u1 = str.charCodeAt(++i);
      u = 65536 + ((u & 1023) << 10) | u1 & 1023
    }
    if (u <= 127) {
      if (outIdx >= endIdx) break;
      outU8Array[outIdx++] = u
    } else if (u <= 2047) {
      if (outIdx + 1 >= endIdx) break;
      outU8Array[outIdx++] = 192 | u >> 6;
      outU8Array[outIdx++] = 128 | u & 63
    } else if (u <= 65535) {
      if (outIdx + 2 >= endIdx) break;
      outU8Array[outIdx++] = 224 | u >> 12;
      outU8Array[outIdx++] = 128 | u >> 6 & 63;
      outU8Array[outIdx++] = 128 | u & 63
    } else {
      if (outIdx + 3 >= endIdx) break;
      outU8Array[outIdx++] = 240 | u >> 18;
      outU8Array[outIdx++] = 128 | u >> 12 & 63;
      outU8Array[outIdx++] = 128 | u >> 6 & 63;
      outU8Array[outIdx++] = 128 | u & 63
    }
  }
  outU8Array[outIdx] = 0;
  return outIdx - startIdx
}

Use like:

stringToUTF8Array('abs', new Uint8Array(3), 0, 4);

Answer 6

Unlike the solutions here, I needed to convert to/from UTF-8 data. For this purpose, I coded the following two functions, using the (un)escape/(en)decodeURIComponent trick. They're pretty wasteful of memory, allocating 9 times the length of the encoded utf8-string, though those should be recovered by gc. Just don't use them for 100mb text.

function utf8AbFromStr(str) {
    var strUtf8 = unescape(encodeURIComponent(str));
    var ab = new Uint8Array(strUtf8.length);
    for (var i = 0; i < strUtf8.length; i++) {
        ab[i] = strUtf8.charCodeAt(i);
    }
    return ab;
}

function strFromUtf8Ab(ab) {
    return decodeURIComponent(escape(String.fromCharCode.apply(null, ab)));
}

Checking that it works:

strFromUtf8Ab(utf8AbFromStr('latinкирилицаαβγδεζηあいうえお'))
-> "latinкирилицаαβγδεζηあいうえお"