How to Base64 Encode a String in Python

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
Code language: Python (python)

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)
Code language: Python (python)

..or more simply:

import base64
encoded = base64.b64encode(b'data to be encoded')
print(encoded)
Code language: Python (python)

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"))
Code language: Python (python)

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
Code language: Python (python)

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.