function hex2a(hexx) {
var hex = hexx.toString();//force conversion
var str = '';
for (var i = 0; i < hex.length; i += 2)
str += String.fromCharCode(parseInt(hex.substr(i, 2), 16));
return str;
}
hex2a('32343630'); // returns '2460'
function a2hex(str) {
var arr = [];
for (var i = 0, l = str.length; i < l; i ++) {
var hex = Number(str.charCodeAt(i)).toString(16);
arr.push(hex);
}
return arr.join('');
}
a2hex('2460'); //returns 32343630
I've found that the above solution will not work if you have to deal with control characters like 02 (STX) or 03 (ETX), anything under 10 will be read as a single digit and throw off everything after. I ran into this problem trying to parse through serial communications. So, I first took the hex string received and put it in a buffer object then converted the hex string into an array of the strings like so:
buf = Buffer.from(data, 'hex');
l = Buffer.byteLength(buf,'hex');
for (i=0; i<l; i++){
char = buf.toString('hex', i, i+1);
msgArray.push(char);
}
Then .join it
message = msgArray.join('');
then I created a hexToAscii function just like in @Delan Azabani's answer above...
function hexToAscii(str){
hexString = str;
strOut = '';
for (x = 0; x < hexString.length; x += 2) {
strOut += String.fromCharCode(parseInt(hexString.substr(x, 2), 16));
}
return strOut;
}
then called the hexToAscii function on 'message'
message = hexToAscii(message);
This approach also allowed me to iterate through the array and slice into the different parts of the transmission using the control characters so I could then deal with only the part of the data I wanted.
Hope this helps someone else!