bufferpants

bufferpants lets you put a pair of pants onto your buffers. It is an extremely simple interface for reading and writing sequential binary data in NodeJS.

bufferpants does not implement a serialization protocol for structured data, though you could definitely use it to implement such functionality.

Example

const {BufferBuilder, BufferReader} = require("bufferpants");

// create a length prefixed string
const builder = new BufferBuilder();
const myStr = Buffer.from("Goodbye, cruel world.", "utf-8");
builder.writeUInt32LE(myStr.length)
       .writeBuffer(myStr);
const buf = builder.build();

// read the string back
const reader = new BufferReader(buf);
const length = reader.readUInt32LE();
const str = reader.readBuffer(length).toString("utf-8");
console.log(str);

BufferReader

BufferReader provides numerous methods for reading integer types of all shapes and sizes from a buffer, automatically moving to the next position after an integer is read.

Constructor

new BufferedReader(buffer)

Properties

• reader.buffer: the buffer to read data from
• reader.position: the position of the reader within the buffer

Methods

BE = big-endian, LE = little-endian

• readBigInt64BE()
• readBigInt64LE()
• readBigUInt64BE()
• readBigUInt64LE()
• readDoubleBE()
• readDoubleLE()
• readFloatBE()
• readFloatLE()
• readInt8()
• readInt16BE()
• readInt16LE()
• readInt32BE()
• readInt32LE()
• readUInt8()
• readUInt16BE()
• readUInt16LE()
• readUInt32BE()
• readUInt32LE()
• readBuffer(length)
  • The returned buffer directly references the original buffer, so any operations on the result of reader.readBuffer() will propagate back to the original buffer. You may need to make a copy of the returned buffer.
• seek(position)
  • Move the reader to a certain offset within the buffer. Throws an error if the requested position is beyond the end of the buffer. Prefer this method to manually setting the position property.
• end()
  • Returns whether the end of the buffer has been reached.

BufferBuilder

BufferBuilder provides numerous methods for writing integer types of all shapes and sizes, which are automatically appended to the final buffer.

Constructor

new BufferBuilder()

Properties

• builder.buffers: the array of buffers that will be joined together when .build() is called

Methods

BE = big-endian, LE = little-endian

• writeBigInt64BE()
• writeBigInt64LE()
• writeBigUInt64BE()
• writeBigUInt64LE()
• writeDoubleBE()
• writeDoubleLE()
• writeFloatBE()
• writeFloatLE()
• writeInt8()
• writeInt16BE()
• writeInt16LE()
• writeInt32BE()
• writeInt32LE()
• writeUInt8()
• writeUInt16BE()
• writeUInt16LE()
• writeUInt32BE()
• writeUInt32LE()
• writeBuffer(buffer)
  • All the above methods return the original BufferBuilder method, allowing these methods to be chained.
• build()
  • Returns the buffer built by the write methods.