bs58

What is bs58?

The bs58 npm package is a utility for encoding and decoding data in Base58, which is a binary-to-text encoding scheme. It is commonly used in cryptocurrency applications, particularly Bitcoin, for encoding addresses and other data in a compact, human-readable format.

What are bs58's main functionalities?

Encoding a Buffer to Base58

This feature allows you to encode a buffer of binary data into a Base58 string. The code sample demonstrates encoding the UTF-8 string 'Hello World' into Base58.

"use strict"; const bs58 = require('bs58'); const bytes = Buffer.from('Hello World', 'utf8'); const encoded = bs58.encode(bytes); console.log(encoded);

Decoding a Base58 String to a Buffer

This feature allows you to decode a Base58 string back into its original binary form, represented as a Buffer. The code sample demonstrates decoding a Base58 string back into the original UTF-8 string.

"use strict"; const bs58 = require('bs58'); const encoded = 'JxF12TrwUP45BMd'; const bytes = bs58.decode(encoded); console.log(bytes.toString('utf8'));

Other packages similar to bs58

base-x

The base-x package is a general-purpose base encoding/decoding library that supports multiple bases, such as Base58, Base64, etc. It is more flexible than bs58 as it can handle a variety of encodings, but it might be slightly more complex to use for Base58 specifically.

base58check

The base58check package is similar to bs58 but includes additional functionality for adding and verifying checksums, which is a common requirement in Bitcoin address encoding. This makes it more suitable for applications that require checksum validation.

README

bs58

JavaScript component to compute Base58 check encoding for Bitcoin.

AMD/CommonJS compatible.

See this article for more details: bitcoin address.

Install

Node.js/Browserify

npm install --save bs58

Component

component install cryptocoinjs/bs58

Bower

bower install bs58

Script

<script src="/path/to/bs58.js"></script>

Usage

encode(arrayOfBytes)

decode(base58str)

Credits

Most of the code from Stefan Thomas in https://github.com/bitcoinjs/bitcoinjs-lib

License

(MIT License)

Copyright 2013, JP Richardson [e-mail]