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pythonutf-8hexxbee

Decoding Byte Array to String

I'm interacting with an XBEE RF chip and want to decode it's incoming source address from a byte array to a string. The manufacturer's software does this already but I need to handle this in my own custom program. So

Received Address: b'\x00\x13\xa2\x00Aga\xf8'

Address (Decoded by Manufacturer): 00 13 A2 00 41 67 61 F8

I have been trying to decode this using address.decode('utf-8') but always receive a UnicodeDecodeError at \xa2 as an invalid start byte. I also need to know how to convert from the decoded version back to the byte array for sending messages back down the network.

Thanks in advance

Solution

  • On Python 3.5 and higher, bytes (and some other bytes-like types) have a hex method, so you can just do:

    b'\x00\x13\xa2\x00Aga\xf8'.hex()

    to get:

    '0013a200416761f8'

    You can call .upper() on the result if case is important.

    On 3.4 and earlier, import binascii, then use the hexlify function:

    binascii.hexlify(b'\x00\x13\xa2\x00Aga\xf8')

    to get the same result.