convert

Manages data format conversion between a variety of targets.

converthint, inputoutput

name	type	description
hint	`Object`	An object with the keys `from` and `to`. Their values describe the conversion to be applied to input.
input	`Uint8Array` `String`	The value to be converted.
output	`Uint8Array` `String`	The result of the conversion.

Behind the scenes, Confidential generics, like encrypt operate on byte arrays. The purpose of convert is to make it easier to convert between byte arrays and other formats, like UTF-8 strings.

However, you will not typically need to use convert directly because Confidential also provides from and to convenience methods for most classes, which call convert for you behind the scenes.

A conversion is specified by the fields of hint, from and to. These identify the current and target format of input, respectively.

Supported Hints

bytes: A byte array, specifically Uint8Array
utf8: A String with UTF-8 encoding
base64: A String with Base64 encoding
safe-base64: A String with URL-Safe Base64 encoding

Errors

convert is meant to provide safe and correct format conversion for your data. There are a number of checks in place that will throw errors if they fail:

Specifying an unsupported conversion
Failing to specify either from or to
Specifying the same value for from and to
Specifying a value for from that conflicts with the type of input. ex, specifying bytes when the input is a string

Example

import assert from "assert"
import {confidential} from "panda-confidential"
{convert} = confidential()

assert.equal "Hello, World!",
  convert from: "base64", to: "utf8", "SGVsbG8sIFdvcmxkIQ=="

assert.equal (Buffer.from "Hello, World!"),
  convert from: "utf8", to: "bytes" , "Hello, World!"

assert.equal "Hello, World!",
  convert from: "bytes", to: "utf8", Buffer.from "Hello, World!"