UTF-8 Encoder / Decoder View UTF-8 byte representations of text and decode byte sequences.

The tool works by utilizing the TextEncoder API from the react library to convert input strings into their corresponding utf8 byte representations. This process involves encoding the string into a Uint8Array, which is then processed and formatted as a human-readable output. Under the hood, it employs a variable-length encoding scheme where characters are represented using 1-4 bytes depending on their Unicode code points, specifically following the UTF-8 standard of allocating 1 byte for ASCII characters (U+0000-007F), 2 bytes for Latin and other non-ASCII characters (U+0080-07FF), 3 bytes for most other Unicode characters (U+0800-FFFF), and 4 bytes for characters outside the Basic Multilingual Plane (U+10000-10FFFF). Each character's byte representation is calculated using its code point, which is obtained via the codePointAt method. The resulting bytes are then converted to hexadecimal, decimal, and binary formats for display.

The TextEncoder API plays a crucial role in this process as it handles the conversion of JavaScript strings (which are internally represented in UTF-16) into UTF-8 encoded Uint8Arrays. This step is essential because it ensures that characters are correctly represented according to their Unicode code points, allowing for accurate debugging and analysis of text encoding issues. The tool also uses Array.from to convert the Uint8Array into an array that can be processed and formatted as needed. Additionally, it employs template literals to construct the output string, combining the character's original form, its Unicode code point in hexadecimal format (e.g., U+0041 for 'A'), and its UTF-8 byte representation in both hex and decimal formats.

The per-character breakdown is generated by iterating over each character in the input string, encoding it individually using TextEncoder, and then formatting the resulting bytes as described above. This detailed output enables developers to inspect how specific characters are encoded in utf8, which is vital for resolving encoding inconsistencies or optimizing text storage and transmission. The use of useCallback ensures that the processing function is only recreated when necessary, optimizing performance by preventing unnecessary re-renders of the component. Error handling is also implemented using a try-catch block, catching any exceptions that occur during processing and returning an error message to inform the user of issues with their input text.