How to convert characters to ASCII code and vice versa in JavaScript?

November 10, 2020 - 2 min read

Contents

Convert character to ASCII code

To convert characters to ASCII, you can use the charCodeAt() string method in JavaScript.

Consider this string,

// string
const str = "Hello John!";

Let's convert the first character of the above string using the charCodeAt() method like this,

// string
const str = "Hello John!";

// convert first character
// of string to ascii by passing the
// index number of character in the string
// as an argument to the method
const asciiVal = str.charCodeAt(0);

console.log(asciiVal); // 72
  • The method accepts a valid index number in the string to get the ASCII value for that character.

See this example live in JSBin.

Convert ASCII code to character

To convert ASCII code to a character, you can use the fromCharCode() Static method in the String class in JavaScript.

Let's say we have ASCII code 65 like this,

// ASCII
const asciiCode = 65;

Now let's convert this ASCII code to a character using the String.fromCharCode() static method like this,

// ASCII
const asciiCode = 65;

// convert ASCII code to character
// by passing the code as an argument
// to the method
const character = String.fromCharCode(asciiCode);

console.log(character); // "A"

See this example live in JSBin

You can also pass more than one ascii code as arguments to the method like this,

// ASCII
const asciiCode = 65;
const asciiCode1 = 66;
const asciiCode2 = 67;

// convert ASCII code to character
// by passing the ascii codes
// as arguments to the method
const character = String.fromCharCode(asciiCode, asciiCode1, asciiCode2);

console.log(character); // "ABC"

See this example live in JSBin.

  • The method accepts valid ASCII codes as arguments to convert to the appropriate character.

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