base128

base128

In many protocols or formats like JSON or early WebSocket, it requires String in UTF-8 representation, so we can not store raw binary data into String without encoding like Base64.

However, Base64 encodes binary into only 6 bits space but we can actually use one more bit in valid UTF-8 string from U+0000 to U+007F, so using Base128 is better than Base64 (~ 16% more information we can store in the same space.)

This Base128 module provides simple encode, decode interfaces between Buffer and String on Node.js which are implemented in C++.

Usage

Use npm to grab a package then load by require().

$ npm install base128
$ node
> var base128 = require('base128')

Examples

To Encode,

 var base128 = require('base128')
 var binary = new Buffer([0xFF, 0x01])
 var string = base128.encode(binary)
 console.log(string) #=> '\u007F\u0003\u0000' (These cahracters are invisible, though.)

To Decode,

 var base128 = require('base128')
 var string = '\u007F\u0003\u0000'
 var binary = base128.decode(string)
 console.log(binary) #=> '<Buffer ff 01>'

Development

Base128 is using NAN to build native add-on binary for Node.js. npm install does everything for you, but there are extra scripts defined in package.json.

$ npm run clean # Cleanup build files
$ npm run distclean # Cleanup all generated files
$ npm run build # Build native add-on binary

To test Base128,

$ npm test