A Buffer
is a temporary memory that holds data until it is consumed. A Buffer
represents a
You can think of a Buffer
like an array of integers that each represent a byte of data.
The Buffer.isBuffer()
method of the Buffer
object is used to check if an object is a Buffer
or not.
isBuffer
is implemented by the Node.jsBuffer
class.
Buffer
and its methods do not need to be imported, asBuffer
is a global class.
Buffer.isBuffer([object])
[object]
: A required parameter that is the object to check if it is a Buffer
or not.isBuffer()
returns a Boolean value that can be true
or false
. The method returns true
if [object]
is a Buffer
; otherwise, it returns false
.
In the example below, we test different objects to see if they are Buffers
.
// create a real Buffer objectconst buf = Buffer.from("A buffer")// creating other objctsconst name = "Theodore"const ourObj = {}const ourArr = []// Checking to see if they are buffersconsole.log(Buffer.isBuffer(name)) // falseconsole.log(Buffer.isBuffer(ourObj)) // falseconsole.log(Buffer.isBuffer(ourArr)) // falseconsole.log(Buffer.isBuffer(buf)) // true
In the code above, ourObj
is not a Buffer
because it is just a plain Javascript object. The array ourArr
is also just a Javascript array object. Likewise, the string name
is just a string and not a Buffer
instance.
As we have seen, the isBuffer()
method is used to check if an object is actually a Buffer
.