ArrayBuffer

Summary

The ArrayBuffer object is used to represent a generic, fixed-length raw binary data buffer. You can not directly manipulate the contents of an ArrayBuffer; instead, you create an one of the typed array objects or a DataView object which represents the buffer in a specific format, and use that to read and write the contents of the buffer.

Syntax

new ArrayBuffer(length)

Parameters

length

The size, in bytes, of the array buffer to create.

Return value

A new ArrayBuffer object of the specified size. Its contents are initialized to 0.

Description

The ArrayBuffer constructor creates a new ArrayBuffer of the given length in bytes.

Getting an array buffer from existing data

• From a Base64 string
• From a local file

Properties

ArrayBuffer.length

The ArrayBuffer constructor's length property whose value is 1.

ArrayBuffer.prototype

Allows the addition of properties to all ArrayBuffer objects.

Methods

ArrayBuffer.isView(arg)

Returns true if arg is a view one of the ArrayBuffer views, such as typed array objects or a DataView. Returns false otherwise.

ArrayBuffer instances

All ArrayBuffer instances inherit from ArrayBuffer.prototype.

Properties

ArrayBuffer.prototype.constructor

Specifies the function that creates an object's prototype. The initial value is the standard built-in ArrayBuffer constructor.

ArrayBuffer.prototype.byteLength

The size, in bytes, of the array. This is established when the array is constructed and cannot be changed. Read only.

Methods

ArrayBuffer.prototype.slice()

Returns a new ArrayBuffer whose contents are a copy of this ArrayBuffer's bytes from begin, inclusive, up to end, exclusive. If either begin or end is negative, it refers to an index from the end of the array, as opposed to from the beginning.

Example

In this example, we create a 8-byte buffer with a Int32Array view referring to the buffer:

var buffer = new ArrayBuffer(8);
var view   = new Int32Array(buffer);

Specifications

Browser compatibility

See also

• JavaScript typed arrays