Binary data in the browser

In Chapter 2, Dealing with Binary and Random Data, we saw how, in Node.js, binary data is typically stored in Buffer objects and how those contain utilities to encode to, and decode from, strings too. Sadly, the Buffer API is one that, to this day, remains specific to Node.js, while the Web Platform opted for a different (more flexible, but possibly more complex) approach.

Buffers and typed arrays in the browser

In the JavaScript specifications supported by web browsers, binary data is stored inside buffers (which is not the same as Buffer objects in Node.js!) and is accessed through views such as typed arrays.

The ArrayBuffer object implements buffers as a chunk of fixed-length data. You can't access data inside an ArrayBuffer object directly, and there are only a few methods and properties in this object that you need to know about:

• You can create a new ArrayBuffer object with the new ArrayBuffer(length)
constructor, where...