Uint8Array to string in Javascript

Question

TextEncoder and TextDecoder from the Encoding standard, which is polyfilled by the stringencoding library, converts between strings and ArrayBuffers:

var uint8array = new TextEncoder().encode("¢");
var string = new TextDecoder().decode(uint8array);

This should work:

// http://www.onicos.com/staff/iz/amuse/javascript/expert/utf.txt

/* utf.js - UTF-8 <=> UTF-16 convertion
 *
 * Copyright (C) 1999 Masanao Izumo <[email protected]>
 * Version: 1.0
 * LastModified: Dec 25 1999
 * This library is free.  You can redistribute it and/or modify it.
 */

function Utf8ArrayToStr(array) {
    var out, i, len, c;
    var char2, char3;

    out = "";
    len = array.length;
    i = 0;
    while(i < len) {
    c = array[i++];
    switch(c >> 4)
    { 
      case 0: case 1: case 2: case 3: case 4: case 5: case 6: case 7:
        // 0xxxxxxx
        out += String.fromCharCode(c);
        break;
      case 12: case 13:
        // 110x xxxx   10xx xxxx
        char2 = array[i++];
        out += String.fromCharCode(((c & 0x1F) << 6) | (char2 & 0x3F));
        break;
      case 14:
        // 1110 xxxx  10xx xxxx  10xx xxxx
        char2 = array[i++];
        char3 = array[i++];
        out += String.fromCharCode(((c & 0x0F) << 12) |
                       ((char2 & 0x3F) << 6) |
                       ((char3 & 0x3F) << 0));
        break;
    }
    }

    return out;
}

It's somewhat cleaner as the other solutions because it doesn't use any hacks nor depends on Browser JS functions, e.g. works also in other JS environments.

Check out the JSFiddle demo.

Also see the related questions: here and here

Here's what I use:

var str = String.fromCharCode.apply(null, uint8Arr);

In Node "Buffer instances are also Uint8Array instances", so buf.toString() works in this case.

Found in one of the Chrome sample applications, although this is meant for larger blocks of data where you're okay with an asynchronous conversion.

/**
 * Converts an array buffer to a string
 *
 * @private
 * @param {ArrayBuffer} buf The buffer to convert
 * @param {Function} callback The function to call when conversion is complete
 */
function _arrayBufferToString(buf, callback) {
  var bb = new Blob([new Uint8Array(buf)]);
  var f = new FileReader();
  f.onload = function(e) {
    callback(e.target.result);
  };
  f.readAsText(bb);
}

The solution given by Albert works well as long as the provided function is invoked infrequently and is only used for arrays of modest size, otherwise it is egregiously inefficient. Here is an enhanced vanilla JavaScript solution that works for both Node and browsers and has the following advantages:

• Works efficiently for all octet array sizes

• Generates no intermediate throw-away strings

• Supports 4-byte characters on modern JS engines (otherwise "?" is substituted)

var utf8ArrayToStr = (function () {
    var charCache = new Array(128);  // Preallocate the cache for the common single byte chars
    var charFromCodePt = String.fromCodePoint || String.fromCharCode;
    var result = [];

    return function (array) {
        var codePt, byte1;
        var buffLen = array.length;

        result.length = 0;

        for (var i = 0; i < buffLen;) {
            byte1 = array[i++];

            if (byte1 <= 0x7F) {
                codePt = byte1;
            } else if (byte1 <= 0xDF) {
                codePt = ((byte1 & 0x1F) << 6) | (array[i++] & 0x3F);
            } else if (byte1 <= 0xEF) {
                codePt = ((byte1 & 0x0F) << 12) | ((array[i++] & 0x3F) << 6) | (array[i++] & 0x3F);
            } else if (String.fromCodePoint) {
                codePt = ((byte1 & 0x07) << 18) | ((array[i++] & 0x3F) << 12) | ((array[i++] & 0x3F) << 6) | (array[i++] & 0x3F);
            } else {
                codePt = 63;    // Cannot convert four byte code points, so use "?" instead
                i += 3;
            }

            result.push(charCache[codePt] || (charCache[codePt] = charFromCodePt(codePt)));
        }

        return result.join('');
    };
})();