Convert a buffer to a string in Node.js
Buffers are powerful stuff. They make it easy to work with raw binary data, and streaming data can leverage them. Many third-party Node.js dependencies leverage buffers in one way or another, especially libraries dealing with data transport.
So what the heck are we supposed to do with a Buffer when we have one?
Obviously that depends on what you're trying to do. You could very well pass the
Buffer object along to a library for processing.
Or, as the title of this post suggests, convert the Buffer object into a good
ol' string, which you can do so with as you please.
Assuming you don't have a buffer readily available, you can create one quite easily like this:
const buffer = Buffer.from('I am a buffer!', 'utf-8');While we already know what the buffer contains, since we defined the string, let's take a look at what the buffer looks like, so we can get a sense for how things would look when we don't know what the buffer contains:
console.log(buffer);
// <Buffer 49 20 61 6d 20 61 20 62 75 66 66 65 72 21>The buffer is effectively just an array of integers that represent the data that it contains.
To get a string back out of the buffer, simply use .toString():
console.log(buffer.toString());
// 'I am a buffer!'