What tools do people use for working with binary in JS across Node.js and the browser that avoids a full Buffer polyfill in the browser? I have not found a good solution yet.

Typed arrays + Dataview work everywhere

Almost all Node.js programs and API's expect a Buffer

buffers are Uint8Arrays though, so theoretically you could only wrap in a buffer in node?

Webpack for browser code. Which packages a polyfill for you. I’d pull my hair out if I had to work with DataViews and TypedArrays directly, but this solution allows me to forget about it.

That polyfill is way too bug tho, especially when I only ever use 3 methods :(

I understand and feel ya, but for my lazy ass it’s the lowest friction option.

It's what I'm doing now until I find a better option.

Let us know, would love to see what you find. :)

Was thinking about it to when working on client side code for @NEARProtocol. We seriously lack JS packaging tools that can operate on method level. Of course language is dynamic, but you should be able to configure exclusion pattern, etc.

What kind of stuff ? Uint8Array + ArrayBuffer does most things there’s also

The only problem is encoding... A wrapper around arraybuffer to support encoding would be cool but the line between that and buffer it self is thin.

What about TextEncoder/TextDecoder APIs? Also I’m meaning to, but never got around, make a lib that exposes all the Buffer.prototype methods as static functions that take Uint8Array’s so only things that need to encode/decode use it but keep API web compatible

That's what i have been thinking about with @lidelOrg but textenconder doesn't cover all the use cases but helps a lot. The bigger problem is the ergonomics of a interface that supports node buffer and a web wrapper arraybuffer thing like this.

Let’s create one

Let's done it 🚀