Text to Binary Code

I want JavaScript to translate text in a textarea into binary code.

For example, if a user types in "TEST" into the textarea, the value "01010100 01000101 01010011 01010100" should be returned.

I would like to avoid using a switch statement to assign each character a binary code value (e.g. case "T": return "01010100) or any other similar technique.

Here's a JSFiddle to show what I mean. Is this possible in native JavaScript?

What you should do is convert every char using charCodeAt function to get the Ascii Code in decimal. Then you can convert it to Binary value using toString(2):

HTML:

<input id="ti1" value ="TEST"/>
<input id="ti2"/>
<button onClick="convert();">Convert!</button>

JS:

function convert() {
  var output = document.getElementById("ti2");
  var input = document.getElementById("ti1").value;
  output.value = "";
  for (var i = 0; i < input.length; i++) {
      output.value += input[i].charCodeAt(0).toString(2) + " ";
  }
}

And here's a fiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/fA24Y/1/

This might be the simplest you can get:

function text2Binary(string) {
    return string.split('').map(function (char) {
        return char.charCodeAt(0).toString(2);
    }).join(' ');
}

1. traverse the string
2. convert every character to their char code
3. convert the char code to binary
4. push it into an array and add the left 0s
5. return a string separated by space

Code:

function textToBin(text) {
  var length = text.length,
      output = [];
  for (var i = 0;i < length; i++) {
    var bin = text[i].charCodeAt().toString(2);
    output.push(Array(8-bin.length+1).join("0") + bin);
  } 
  return output.join(" ");
}
textToBin("!a") => "00100001 01100001"

Another way

function textToBin(text) {
  return (
    Array
      .from(text)
      .reduce((acc, char) => acc.concat(char.charCodeAt().toString(2)), [])
      .map(bin => '0'.repeat(8 - bin.length) + bin )
      .join(' ')
  );
}

Here's a pretty generic, native implementation, that I wrote some time ago,

// ABC - a generic, native JS (A)scii(B)inary(C)onverter.
// (c) 2013 Stephan Schmitz <[email protected]>
// License: MIT, http://eyecatchup.mit-license.org
// URL: https://gist.github.com/eyecatchup/6742657
var ABC = {
  toAscii: function(bin) {
    return bin.replace(/\s*[01]{8}\s*/g, function(bin) {
      return String.fromCharCode(parseInt(bin, 2))
    })
  },
  toBinary: function(str, spaceSeparatedOctets) {
    return str.replace(/[\s\S]/g, function(str) {
      str = ABC.zeroPad(str.charCodeAt().toString(2));
      return !1 == spaceSeparatedOctets ? str : str + " "
    })
  },
  zeroPad: function(num) {
    return "00000000".slice(String(num).length) + num
  }
};

and to be used as follows:

var binary1      = "01100110011001010110010101101100011010010110111001100111001000000110110001110101011000110110101101111001",
    binary2      = "01100110 01100101 01100101 01101100 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01101100 01110101 01100011 01101011 01111001",
    binary1Ascii = ABC.toAscii(binary1),
    binary2Ascii = ABC.toAscii(binary2);

console.log("Binary 1:                   " + binary1);
console.log("Binary 1 to ASCII:          " + binary1Ascii);
console.log("Binary 2:                   " + binary2);
console.log("Binary 2 to ASCII:          " + binary2Ascii);
console.log("Ascii to Binary:            " + ABC.toBinary(binary1Ascii));     // default: space-separated octets
console.log("Ascii to Binary /wo spaces: " + ABC.toBinary(binary1Ascii, 0));  // 2nd parameter false to not space-separate octets

Source is on Github (gist): https://gist.github.com/eyecatchup/6742657

Hope it helps. Feel free to use for whatever you want (well, at least for whatever MIT permits).

var PADDING = "00000000"

var string = "TEST"
var resultArray = []

for (var i = 0; i < string.length; i++) {
  var compact = string.charCodeAt(i).toString(2)
  var padded  = compact.substring(0, PADDING.length - compact.length) + compact

  resultArray.push(padded)
}

console.log(resultArray.join(" "))