BrowserFS Buffer v0.1.7

An emulation of NodeJS's Buffer module. Used in BrowserFS.

Features

• Space-efficient binary representation across browsers.
  • ArrayBuffer in modern browsers
  • CanvasPixelArray in older browsers that do not support typed arrays, but support the canvas.
  • Array of 32-bit ints in older browsers without the above.
• Supports the entirety of the NodeJS Buffer API! (including string encoding)
  • ...with a few exceptions, due to browser limitations (see below).
• Well-tested! Passes all of Node's Buffer tests.
  • The unit tests are located in the BrowserFS repository.

Use with Browserify

This module can be used with Browserify in place of its default Buffer module!

Here's the relevant configuration:

{
    builtins:
    {
        "buffer": require.resolve('bfs-buffer')
    },
    insertGlobalVars: {
        "Buffer": function() { return "require('bfs-buffer').Buffer" }
    }
}

Limitations

• Does not support array indexing. e.g. you cannot do buff[0] = 3.
  • Browsers do not let you implement custom arrays, and merely setting the prototype of Buffer to Uint8Array, as in the official Node implementation of Buffer, is not portable across browsers.