@unabandoned/string_decoder

Node-core string_decoder for userland — a maintained fork

npm install --save @unabandoned/string_decoder

This package is a mirror of the string_decoder implementation in Node core. It turns a series of buffers into a series of strings without breaking apart multi-byte characters, which is what stream consumers need when a character's bytes straddle two chunks.

Full documentation may be found on the Node.js website.

Why this fork exists

Upstream nodejs/string_decoder has been frozen at 1.3.0 since 2019, and it still shipped the abandoned safe-buffer runtime dependency. That left nothing keeping the tree current for the bundlers that pull it in transitively — most visibly browserify, which injects this package as the browser shim for require('string_decoder').

This fork is maintained under the unabandoned program, where Renovate keeps the dependency tree current and releases are cut on a regular cadence. See the package dashboard for live status.

No runtime dependencies

Node core reads Buffer straight off the buffer module. Upstream's build script rewrote that line to pull Buffer from the safe-buffer shim instead, so the package could run on Node < 4.5, where Buffer.from and Buffer.allocUnsafe did not exist yet.

This fork requires Node >= 22.12, so that shim was dead weight — the line is restored to the core original and safe-buffer is gone. The package now has no runtime dependencies. Bundlers map buffer to their browser Buffer implementation, which supplies the same allocUnsafe and isEncoding, so browser builds are unaffected.

Usage

const { StringDecoder } = require('@unabandoned/string_decoder');

const decoder = new StringDecoder('utf8');
decoder.write(Buffer.from([0xe2, 0x82])); // '' — incomplete character held back
decoder.write(Buffer.from([0xac])); // '€' — completed
decoder.end(); // ''

Requirements

• Node.js >= 22.12

Testing

The suite runs on Node's built-in test runner, with no third-party test dependencies:

npm test

License

MIT. See LICENSE.