How to convert an Uint8Array to string in Javascript

Working with node.js or other javascript platforms (multioperability), you'll find that some methods decide to return something different than a string. An Uint8Array is a typed array that represents an array of 8-bit unsigned integers.

The following list of methods , provide a collection of efficient ways to convert an Uint8Array to a regular string in javascript.

Little strings

The following method is acceptable for little arrays (>=100k characters), otherwise you'll get exceptions as RangeError : Maximum call stack size exceeded or Out of stack space. However you need to know that this method doesn't play good with UTF-8 characters.

function uint8arrayToStringMethod(myUint8Arr){
   return String.fromCharCode.apply(null, myUint8Arr);
}

Browser implementation

If your javascript is being executed in a browser, you can make use of the TextEncoder and TextDecoder native functions which allow you to choose which codification you want to use. The Encoding API helps solving the string conversion problem.

/**
 * Convert an Uint8Array into a string.
 *
 * @returns {String}
 */
function Decodeuint8arr(uint8array){
    return new TextDecoder("utf-8").decode(uint8array);
}

/**
 * Convert a string into a Uint8Array.
 *
 * @returns {Uint8Array}
 */
function Encodeuint8arr(myString){
    return new TextEncoder("utf-8").encode(myString);
}

Crossplatform method

The following method is very useful and works pretty good. It doesn't use any hacks nor depends on Browser JS functions, e.g. works also in other JS environments. Works through the UTF-8 convention.

// 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;
}

Large blocks

If your data block is huge, you may want to use a method that works properly with huge data (an async method). In this case we'll create blob that contains our Uint8Array and then we'll use the file reader to read it as text.

/**
 * Converts an array buffer to a string
 *
 * @param {Uin8} uint8arr | The buffer to convert
 * @param {Function} callback | The function to call when conversion is complete
 */
function largeuint8ArrToString(uint8arr, callback) {
    var bb = new Blob([uint8arr]);
    var f = new FileReader();
    f.onload = function(e) {
        callback(e.target.result);
    };
    
    f.readAsText(bb);
}

// Usage example
// "Hello" in Uint8Array format
var myuint8Arr = new Uint8Array([72, 101, 108, 108, 111, 32, 33]);

largeuint8ArrToString(myuint8Arr,function(text){
    // Hello
    console.log(text);
});

Note: as said before, this method is recommendable only if you handle huge datasets.

Have fun