Handling Node.js socket data

Question

I have server receiving data from a client [GPS Device]. I have problem presenting the data (i.e the results obtained from the client) in a readable format. Below are the things I have tried.

Doing:

console.log(data)

I get

<Buffer d0 d7 3d 00 c4 56 7e 81>

Also tried

 console.log(data.toString())

But I get unwanted results:See below:

��A�V~�

Here is my full code:

var net = require('net');
var fs = require('fs');

var server = net.createServer(function (socket) {
  console.log('Server started: Waiting for client connection ...');
  console.log('Client connected:port,address: '+socket.remotePort,      socket.remoteAddress);
  socket.on('data', function (data) {
        var date = new Date();
        var today = date.getDate()+'_'+date.getMonth();
        fs.appendFile(today+'_log.txt', data, function (err) {
          if (err) throw err;
            console.log(data.toString())

    });
 });
});

server.listen(my_port, my_ip);

Thanks for your input.

Solution

According to the documentation, you must specify an encoding to get a String instead of a Buffer:

Event: 'data'#
Buffer object
Emitted when data is received. The argument data will be a Buffer or String. Encoding of data is set by socket.setEncoding().

You could configure the socket to get the data in UTF-8, for example, with:

socket.setEncoding('utf8');