binquire - convert binary files to require-able JS files

binquire is a command-line utility (and underlying library) that takes binary files and encodes them as CommonJS modules. It can encode binary data as base64 strings (the most compact option), hex strings, or an array of numeric bytes. It produces a file with the format:

module.exports=BINARY;

where BINARY is the selected binary representation of your data.

For example, exporting a file in base64 format might result in the following output:

module.exports="aGVsbG8sIHdvcmxkCg==";

Installation

To use binquire as a command line tool, install it via npm install -g binquire

To use binquire locally as part of your project, install it as a dependency via npm install --save binquire

Command-line Usage

After installing binquire, you will have a binary of the same name available on your machine. The binquire binary is used in the following way:

binquire infile [outfile] [options]

where infile is the name of the binary file you wish to convert, outfile is the optional name of the output JavaScript file, and options are any of the available configuration options. If no outfile is specified, it will be sent to stdout. The default output format is a base64 string.

Supported options are:

• --hex - Output as a hex string.
• --array - Output as an array of numeric bytes.

So to output image.png to image-hex.js, in hex-string format, you would use the following command:

binquire image.png image-hex.js --hex

API Usage

require('binquire') also exports the core functionality as a programmable API. It exports a single function:

binquire(data, options)

data is a Node.js Buffer object containing the binary data you want to export.

options is an optional configuration object supporting the following keys:

• type - The type of export format, supporting the following values:
  • base64 (default) - Encodes the data as a base64 string
  • hex - Encodes the data as a hex string
  • array - Encodes the data as a numeric array of bytes