README

Modern, endian-aware byte buffer for PHP inspired by ActionScript's ByteArray and Java's ByteBuffer.

Requirements

• PHP >= 8.1
• ext-zlib (for compression helpers)
• ext-iconv

Installation

composer require byte-array/byte-array

Quick start

<?php

use ByteArray\ByteArray;

require __DIR__ . '/vendor/autoload.php';

$buffer = new ByteArray();
$buffer->writeBoolean(true);
$buffer->writeInt(42);
$buffer->writeUTF('hello');
$buffer->writeDouble(3.14);

$buffer->rewind();

$flag = $buffer->readBoolean();
$number = $buffer->readInt();
$text = $buffer->readUTF();
$pi = $buffer->readDouble();

Features

• Big- and little-endian reads/writes for common primitives (byte, short, int, float, double).
• UTF strings with length prefix plus raw UTF byte helpers.
• Safe bounds checks on every read with clear exceptions.
• Compression/ decompression (zlib, gzip) with error handling.
• Conversions to/from Base64 and hexadecimal.
• File helpers (fromFile, toFile), slicing, duplication, and position helpers (rewind, seek, skip, isEOF).
• Optional JSON-based serialization (writeJson/readJson) as a safe alternative to PHP serialize.
• Random byte generation for tokens and seeds.

Endianness

$buffer->setEndian(ByteArray::ENDIAN_LITTLE); // or ByteArray::ENDIAN_BIG

All numeric reads/writes honor the current setting.

Compression helpers

$buffer->compress(ByteArray::COMPRESSION_GZIP);
$buffer->uncompress(ByteArray::COMPRESSION_GZIP);

Exceptions are thrown for unsupported algorithms or failures.

Serialization safety

• writeObject/readObject mirror the legacy PHP serialize/unserialize flow and must not be used with untrusted data.
• Prefer the safe alternatives writeJson and readJson when exchanging data externally.

Testing

composer install
composer test

CI

GitHub Actions workflow at .github/workflows/tests.yml runs the PHPUnit suite on PHP 8.1 and 8.2.

License

MIT – see LICENSE.