How to convert string and integer to binary in nodejs?

Question

I have the following problems. I have an integer and a string. Both of them need to be converted into binary format. For the integer I found a solution that, as far as I can tell, works. The string on the other hand, I don't have a solid understanding of it.

String(16), as far as I understand, means something like Array<UInt8> and has a fixed length of 16. Am I correct? If so, is there a better way to converting them by hand built in in NodeJS?

const myNumber = 2
const myString = 'MyString'

const myNumberInBinary = toUInt16(myNumber) // eg. 0000000000000101
const myStringinBinary = toString16(myString) // I honestly don't know

function toUInt16(number) {
    let binaryString = Number(number).toString(2)
    while (binaryString.length < 16) {
        binaryString = '0' + binaryString
    }
    return binaryString
}

// TODO: implement
function toString16(string) {
    ...
    return binaryString
}

best regards

EDIT: Thanks for all the comments and the answer. They helped me understand this process better. The solution I ended up with is this one:

const bitString = "00000101"
const buffer = new Buffer.alloc(bitString.length / 8)

for (let i = 0; i < bitString.length; i++) {
  const value = bitString.substring(i * 8, (i * 8) + 8)
  buffer[i] = Number(value)        
}

fs.writeFileSync('my_file', buffer, 'binary')

Thanks again!

Are you sure that the string "0000000000000101", which would be like '\x30\x30...\x30\x31\x30\x31', which consists of [0b110000, 0b110000, ...., 0b110000, 0b110001, 0b110000, 0b110001], is the actual thing required? NodeJS can write actual binary files. ASCII '0' characters are not just 0 bits, and '1' characters are not just 1 bits either — qrsngky
– qrsngky, Commented Apr 5, 2022 at 12:20
I'm not sure about your requirements, but there are functions designed for that: buf.readUIntLE and but.writeUIntLE for non-negative integers and Buffer.from(...) and buf.toString(...) for strings. Are the integers in your program only from 0 to 65535? — qrsngky
– qrsngky, Commented Apr 6, 2022 at 14:36

nedoder · Accepted Answer · 2022-04-04 11:42:01Z

1

You should loop through the string and do this on each character:

 let result = ""
 
 for (let i = 0; i < myString.length; i++) {
      result += myString[i].charCodeAt(0).toString(2) + " ";
  }

answered Apr 4, 2022 at 11:42

nedoder

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