Learn how to python base64 encode in this tutorial below.
Python comes with the base64 module, but how do you use it?
You start by including the module:
import base64
But you would probably expect to just do something like print( base64.b64encode('something' )), but this will throw an error and complain about:
TypeError: a bytes-like object is required, not 'str'
How to Base64 Encode a String?
You can either do one of the following:
import base64
encoded = base64.b64encode('data to be encoded'.encode('ascii'))
print(encoded)
..or more simply:
import base64
encoded = base64.b64encode(b'data to be encoded')
print(encoded)
Either way, you will end up with a b'ZGF0YSB0byBiZSBlbmNvZGVk' byte string response
Base64 Encoding Exotic Characters
If your string contains ‘exotic characters’, it may be safer to encode it with utf-8:
encoded = base64.b64encode (bytes('data to be encoded', "utf-8"))
To decode this range, you could do something like this:
import base64
a = base64.b64encode(bytes(u'complex string: ñáéíóúÑ', "utf-8"))
# a: b'Y29tcGxleCBzdHJpbmc6IMOxw6HDqcOtw7PDusOR'
b = base64.b64decode(a).decode("utf-8", "ignore")
print(b)
# b :complex string: ñáéíóúÑ
By using these solutions, it is simple to python base64 encode.
Why do I need ‘b’ to encode a string with Base64?
This is because base64 encoding takes in 8-bit binary byte data and then encodes it by using a range of character which include the following:
A-Z, a-z, 0-9, +, /*
This is in order to be able to transmit the payload over various channels that don’t preserve the 8-bits of data.
An example of this is email.
Therefore, you need to use Python’s b'' syntax to make it a string of 8-bit bytes. Without the b'' it will simply be a standard string.
An important note to be aware of is that a string in Python is a sequence of Unicode characters.