
allocUnsafe() should only be used if you have a good reason (e.g., performance optimizations). toString ( ) ) // -> 'hi, I am a safely allocated buffer' Old data will be overwritten with the bytes // from 'hi, I am a safely allocated buffer' string.īuff. length ) // Copies the original buffer into the new, unsafe buffer. It will be initally filled with old data. from ( "hi, I am a safely allocated buffer" ) // Creates a new empty buffer with `allocUnsafe` of the same // length as the previous buffer. Creates a buffer from a string const buff = Buffer.

By default, it will parse your input using utf-8 as the enconding (see here all enconding types supported): When passing a string, a new buffer object will be created containing that string. Depending on which params you pass, om() will create a buffer in a slightly different way. It accepts a string, an array, an ArrayBuffer, or another buffer instance. This method is the most straightforward way to create a buffer. In the past, buffers were created using the Buffer class constructor (e.g., new Buffer()). Creating buffersīuffers are created using these three methods: You don't need to import or require it as a separate module. If you're following the examples on your computer, keep in mind that the Buffer class is exposed globally. Buffers are also iterable and can be used within constructs such as for-of. You will notice that handling buffers is a bit similar to the way we handle arrays in JavaScript. Let's see some of the things we can do with buffers. Buffers were created to provide a proper set of APIs to manipulate bits and bytes in an easy and performant way. You would have to resort to primitives such as strings, which are slower and have no specialized tools to handle binaries. Why buffers? Before buffers were introduced, there was no easy way of handling binary data in JavaScript. This way, every byte can be represented using just two digits - a pair of numbers and letters from 0-9 and "a" to "f". That's because Node.js displays bytes using the hexadecimal system. You might be asking yourself: "if these are bits and bytes, where are the 0s and 1s?" The total size of this particular buffer is 10. Each pair represents a byte stored in the buffer.

In above examples we have seen alloc() and from(). There are three separate functions allocated in the Buffer API to use and create new buffers. There are different accepted encoding when creating a Buffer: const buf1 = Buffer.alloc(10) įrom UTF-8-encoded strings, the creation is like this: const buf2 = om('Hello World!') You can create an empty buffer by with a size of 10 bytes. There are different ways you can create a buffer in Node.js. To handle binary data Node.js includes a binary buffer implementation with a global module called Buffer. JavaScript does not have a byte type data in its core API. For example, the following are five different binaries: Computer converts the data to this binary format to store and perform operations. Each number in a binary, each 1 and 0 in a set are called a bit. Binary is simply a set or a collection of 1 and 0.
