Guide

xBuffer is a lightweight JavaScript library that provides a Node.js-style Buffer API for browsers. It is built on top of Uint8Array and includes helpers for common encoding and decoding workflows.

Features

• Buffer-like API: Buffer.from, Buffer.alloc, Buffer.concat, Buffer.isBuffer, and many familiar instance methods.
• Encoding and Decoding: Convert between bytes and strings with base64, hex, utf-8, ascii, utf16le, and more.
• Browser-friendly: Designed for environments that do not have Node's built-in Buffer.

Installation

npm

npm install @remotex-labs/xbuffer

yarn

yarn add @remotex-labs/xbuffer

pnpm

pnpm add @remotex-labs/xbuffer

Quick Start

Create buffers from strings or bytes:

import { Buffer } from '@remotex-labs/xbuffer';

const a = Buffer.from('Hello, world!', 'utf-8');
const b = Buffer.from(new Uint8Array([72, 101, 108, 108, 111]));
const c = Buffer.alloc(8, 0);

console.log(a.toString('utf-8')); // "Hello, world!"
console.log(b.toString('utf-8')); // "Hello"
console.log(c.length); // 8

Encodings

Use toString(encoding) to encode bytes into strings, and Buffer.from(string, encoding) to decode strings back into bytes.

import { Buffer } from '@remotex-labs/xbuffer';

const raw = Buffer.from('Hello', 'utf-8');

const hex = raw.toString('hex');       // "48656c6c6f"
const base64 = raw.toString('base64'); // "SGVsbG8="

const fromHex = Buffer.from(hex, 'hex');
const fromBase64 = Buffer.from(base64, 'base64');

console.log(fromHex.toString('utf-8'));    // "Hello"
console.log(fromBase64.toString('utf-8')); // "Hello"

ArrayBuffer and Uint8Array Interop

xBuffer works naturally with Uint8Array and ArrayBuffer.

import { Buffer } from '@remotex-labs/xbuffer';

const ab = new ArrayBuffer(16);
const view = new Uint8Array(ab);
view[0] = 0x48; // 'H'
view[1] = 0x69; // 'i'

const buf = Buffer.from(ab, 0, 2);
console.log(buf.toString('ascii')); // "Hi"

// Buffer is a Uint8Array view, so these are available:
console.log(buf.buffer === ab); // true

Allocation, Concat, and Length

import { Buffer } from '@remotex-labs/xbuffer';

const a = Buffer.alloc(3, 0x01);
const b = Buffer.from([0x02, 0x03]);
const c = Buffer.concat([a, b]); // [1, 1, 1, 2, 3]

console.log(Buffer.isBuffer(c)); // true
console.log(Buffer.byteLength('Hello', 'utf-8')); // 5

WARNING

Buffer.allocUnsafe(size) is intended to skip initialization for speed. Treat it as uninitialized and overwrite it before reading.

Global Buffer

If you're targeting an environment without a global Buffer, you can attach xBuffer to globalThis:

import { setGlobalBuffer } from '@remotex-labs/xbuffer';

setGlobalBuffer();
// globalThis.Buffer is now available

console.log Custom Inspect Support

supportUtilInspect() patches console.log so objects that implement Symbol.for('nodejs.util.inspect.custom') can render custom output.

import { supportUtilInspect } from '@remotex-labs/xbuffer';

supportUtilInspect();

const obj = {
  [Symbol.for('nodejs.util.inspect.custom')]: () => 'Custom inspection output',
};

console.log(obj); // "Custom inspection output"