How to get tar contents out of a hexa representation

Question

I make RESTAPI call to an endpoint and I expect to receive .tar contents. But what I received is

<Buffer 4d 4d 00 2a 00 00 00 08 00 13 01 00 00 03 00 00 00 01 01......

The method connectForTar shows how I receive the response and how I handle it.

Is it possible to convert that hexa representation to tar? I want to get the tar contents out of it, please.

code:

connectForTar(options, body, onResult) {
    const resCallback = (response) => {
        if (response.statusCode < 200 || response.statusCode > 299) {
            console.error(errorTag,"Did not get an OK from the server. Code:",response.statusCode);
            console.error(errorTag,"Did not get an OK from the server. Msg:",response.statusMessage);
            onResult(response.statusCode, null);
            response.resume();
            return;
        }
        
        let data = [];
        let buffer = null;
        response.on('data', (chunk) => {
            data.push(chunk);
        });
        response.on('end', () => {
            buffer = Buffer.concat(data);
            console.info({msg:infoTag +' response ended',contents:buffer});
            onResult(response.statusCode, buffer, null);                
        });
    }
    
    const req = https.request(options, resCallback);
    req.write(JSON.stringify(body));
    req.on('error', (err) => {
        console.error(errorTag + "problem with request.e.:", err);
        console.error(errorTag + "problem with request.e.stack:", err.stack);
    });
    req.end();
}

tar contents

Answer 1

Whoever's told you you're getting a TAR file has misled you.

Based on the first bytes, MM<nul>* (4D 4D 00 2A in hexadecimal), you have a big-endian TIFF file, not a TAR file. (In other words, it's hard to get TAR contents out of those bytes, since they're evidently not a TAR.)

Given that the file also mentions Mercator, I would wager it's a GeoTIFF file.