@toonamfjs/bytearray-node

A Node.js implementation of an ActionScript 3-style ByteArray providing a convenient, high-level API for reading and writing binary data streams, with support for various primitive types, strings, compression, and buffer management, based on bytearray-node by Zaseth.

This project is also a forked version from bytearray-node from @Pyrodash.

Features

• Read and write primitive types:
  • Signed/unsigned bytes, shorts, ints, floats, doubles, booleans
• String support:
  • Read/write UTF-8 strings and multi-byte strings with custom character sets (using iconv-lite)
• Buffer stream API:
  • Maintain a movable position within the buffer like a stream
  • bytesAvailable to check remaining unread bytes
  • Initialize from Array or Buffer
• Compression and decompression:
  • Built-in support for zlib and deflate compression/decompression via Node.js
• Buffer management:
  • Dynamically expands the buffer as needed
  • Clear, reset, or convert buffer to JSON or string

Installation

$ npm install @toonamf/bytearray-node`

Usage

const ByteArray = require('@toonamfjs/bytearray-node')
const ba = new ByteArray()

// Write various types
ba.writeByte(1)
ba.writeShort(5)
ba.writeInt(123456)
ba.writeDouble(Math.PI)
ba.writeUTF('Hello, world!')

// Reset position for reading
ba.position = 0

console.log(ba.readByte())    // 1
console.log(ba.readShort())   // 5
console.log(ba.readInt())     // 123456
console.log(ba.readDouble())  // 3.141592653589793
console.log(ba.readUTF())     // Hello, world!

API Highlights

Construction

new ByteArray()                // Empty buffer
new ByteArray([1,2,3])         // From array
new ByteArray(Buffer.alloc(4)) // From Buffer

Reading and Writing

• writeByte(value), readByte()
• writeUnsignedByte(value), readUnsignedByte()
• writeShort(value), readShort()
• writeUnsignedShort(value), readUnsignedShort()
• writeInt(value), readInt()
• writeUnsignedInt(value), readUnsignedInt()
• writeFloat(value), readFloat()
• writeDouble(value), readDouble()
• writeBoolean(value), readBoolean()
• writeUTF(string), readUTF()
• writeUTFBytes(string), readUTFBytes(length)
• writeMultiByte(string, charset), readMultiByte(length, charset)
• writeBytes(otherByteArray[, offset[, length]]), readBytes(otherByteArray[, offset[, length]])

Compression

• compress(algorithm)
  Compresses the buffer (algorithm = 'zlib' or 'deflate')

• uncompress(algorithm)
  Decompresses the buffer

Buffer Management

• clear()
  Clears the buffer and resets position

• reset(buffer)
  Re-initializes from an array or buffer

• toJSON(), toString()
  Convert buffer to JSON or string

• Properties:

  • position (current read/write position)
  • length (buffer length; can be set)
  • bytesAvailable (remaining bytes to read)
  • endian (endianness; true = BE, false = LE)

Example: Buffer Expansion & Compression

const ba = new ByteArray()
ba.writeUTFBytes('Hello, ByteArray!')
ba.compress('zlib')
ba.uncompress('zlib')
ba.position = 0
console.log(ba.readUTFBytes(17)) // Hello, ByteArray!

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License

MIT License © 2025 Juansecu

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Note:
While the API is inspired by ActionScript 3's ByteArray, this package does not provide AMF0/AMF3 serialization/deserialization out of the box.

For AMF0/AMF3 serialization/deserialization, consider using @toonamfjs/client for client-side and @toonamfjs/server for server-side.