Converting between strings and ArrayBuffers

Question

Is there a commonly accepted technique for efficiently converting JavaScript strings to ArrayBuffers and vice-versa? Specifically, I\'d like to be able to write the contents

Answer 1

Well, here's a somewhat convoluted way of doing the same thing:

var string = "Blah blah blah", output;
var bb = new (window.BlobBuilder||window.WebKitBlobBuilder||window.MozBlobBuilder)();
bb.append(string);
var f = new FileReader();
f.onload = function(e) {
  // do whatever
  output = e.target.result;
}
f.readAsArrayBuffer(bb.getBlob());

Edit: BlobBuilder has long been deprecated in favor of the Blob constructor, which did not exist when I first wrote this post. Here's an updated version. (And yes, this has always been a very silly way to do the conversion, but it was just for fun!)

var string = "Blah blah blah", output;
var f = new FileReader();
f.onload = function(e) {
  // do whatever
  output = e.target.result;
};
f.readAsArrayBuffer(new Blob([string]));