holepunchto/sodium-native

Low level bindings for libsodium

JavaScript

333

501 commits

updated May 3, 2026

See the code

README

sodium-native

Low level bindings for libsodium.

npm install sodium-native

The goal of this project is to be thin, stable, unopionated wrapper around libsodium.

All methods exposed are more or less a direct translation of the libsodium c-api. This means that most data types are buffers and you have to manage allocating return values and passing them in as arguments instead of receiving them as return values.

This makes this API harder to use than other libsodium wrappers out there, but also means that you'll be able to get a lot of perf / memory improvements as you can do stuff like inline encryption / decryption, reuse buffers etc.

This also makes this library useful as a foundation for more high level crypto abstractions that you want to make.

Usage

var sodium = require('sodium-native')

var nonce = Buffer.alloc(sodium.crypto_secretbox_NONCEBYTES)
var key = sodium.sodium_malloc(sodium.crypto_secretbox_KEYBYTES) // secure buffer
var message = Buffer.from('Hello, World!')
var ciphertext = Buffer.alloc(message.length + sodium.crypto_secretbox_MACBYTES)

sodium.randombytes_buf(nonce) // insert random data into nonce
sodium.randombytes_buf(key) // insert random data into key

// encrypted message is stored in ciphertext.
sodium.crypto_secretbox_easy(ciphertext, message, nonce, key)

console.log('Encrypted message:', ciphertext)

var plainText = Buffer.alloc(ciphertext.length - sodium.crypto_secretbox_MACBYTES)

if (!sodium.crypto_secretbox_open_easy(plainText, ciphertext, nonce, key)) {
  console.log('Decryption failed!')
} else {
  console.log('Decrypted message:', plainText, '(' + plainText.toString() + ')')
}

Documentation

Complete documentation may be found on the sodium-friends website

License

MIT

holepunchto/sodium-native

Low level bindings for libsodium

JavaScript

333

501 commits

updated May 3, 2026

See the code

README

sodium-native

Low level bindings for libsodium.

npm install sodium-native

The goal of this project is to be thin, stable, unopionated wrapper around libsodium.

All methods exposed are more or less a direct translation of the libsodium c-api. This means that most data types are buffers and you have to manage allocating return values and passing them in as arguments instead of receiving them as return values.

This makes this API harder to use than other libsodium wrappers out there, but also means that you'll be able to get a lot of perf / memory improvements as you can do stuff like inline encryption / decryption, reuse buffers etc.

This also makes this library useful as a foundation for more high level crypto abstractions that you want to make.

Usage

var sodium = require('sodium-native')

var nonce = Buffer.alloc(sodium.crypto_secretbox_NONCEBYTES)
var key = sodium.sodium_malloc(sodium.crypto_secretbox_KEYBYTES) // secure buffer
var message = Buffer.from('Hello, World!')
var ciphertext = Buffer.alloc(message.length + sodium.crypto_secretbox_MACBYTES)

sodium.randombytes_buf(nonce) // insert random data into nonce
sodium.randombytes_buf(key) // insert random data into key

// encrypted message is stored in ciphertext.
sodium.crypto_secretbox_easy(ciphertext, message, nonce, key)

console.log('Encrypted message:', ciphertext)

var plainText = Buffer.alloc(ciphertext.length - sodium.crypto_secretbox_MACBYTES)

if (!sodium.crypto_secretbox_open_easy(plainText, ciphertext, nonce, key)) {
  console.log('Decryption failed!')
} else {
  console.log('Decrypted message:', plainText, '(' + plainText.toString() + ')')
}

Documentation

Complete documentation may be found on the sodium-friends website

License

MIT

Project health

Latest release

5.1.0 · Mar 6, 2026

Releases this year

2

Significant stargazers

Tomas Della Vedova

1,568 followers · starred Dec 2017

Nikita Skovoroda

683 followers · starred Aug 2018

dnlup

39 followers · starred Dec 2020

Dominyk Tiller

159 followers · starred Oct 2019