fix: topicToKey should return a buffer not a string

[achingbrain]

Also, Buffer.toString() without specifying an encoding can result in unprintable characters being part of the string which can result in false positives when comparing stringified buffers.

E.g:

Buffer.from([254]).toString() === Buffer.from([253]).toString()
// true

Buffer.from([254]).toString('hex') === Buffer.from([253]).toString('hex')
// false

Also, also, stop putting stringified buffers into the logs because it can corrupt your console output.

[vasco-santos]

LGTM!

Can you just test this commit version with ipfs/interop tests before I release this?

[achingbrain]

Interesting, does the go implementation stringify buffers and use them for comparison? There have been bugs with this previously where it used the default ASCII encoding for byte arrays sent in HTTP responses which meant you then couldn't recreate them on the client side as it generated invalid JSON.

[vasco-santos]

Yes, that was a problem at the time I implemented this. The topics needed to be in this exact format to be consistent with the go side

[achingbrain]

Hmm, this sounds like a bug in the go implementation. We shouldn't replicate their bugs 🤣

[vasco-santos]

Hmm, this sounds like a bug in the go implementation. We shouldn't replicate their bugs 🤣

Yes, except when we also need to interop with them! I would like a venue to have these discussions

[achingbrain]

The interop tests with this pass for me locally. Need ipfs/js-ipfs#2428 to go in before it'll pass on CI though as it's got some fixes for other failing interop tests.

[vasco-santos]

Cool! So, should I move and release this?

[achingbrain]

Yes please!