What encoding is this '\x00\x00\x00\x05'?

Question

I'm sending an Integer from my Java Client to my Python Server using:

outputStream.writeInt(5);

And on the server:

_id = self.request.recv(4)

I get:

Name   | Type|  Value
_id    | str |  '\x00\x00\x00\x05'

How can i decode this and convert it back to Integer ?

Answer 1

You can decode this with the python struct module :

>>> import struct
>>> struct.unpack('>i', '\x00\x00\x00\x05')
(5,)

The >i pattern expects a big-endian signed integer (4 bytes).