Creating a BLOB from a Base64 string in JavaScript

Question

I have Base64-encoded binary data in a string:

const contentType = \'image/png\';
const b64Data = \'iVBORw0KGg         


        

Answer 1

I noticed that Internet Explorer 11 gets incredibly slow when slicing the data like Jeremy suggested. This is true for Chrome, but Internet Explorer seems to have a problem when passing the sliced data to the Blob-Constructor. On my machine, passing 5 MB of data makes Internet Explorer crash and memory consumption is going through the roof. Chrome creates the blob in no time.

Run this code for a comparison:

var byteArrays = [],
    megaBytes = 2,
    byteArray = new Uint8Array(megaBytes*1024*1024),
    block,
    blobSlowOnIE, blobFastOnIE,
    i;

for (i = 0; i < (megaBytes*1024); i++) {
    block = new Uint8Array(1024);
    byteArrays.push(block);
}

//debugger;

console.profile("No Slices");
blobSlowOnIE = new Blob(byteArrays, { type: 'text/plain'});
console.profileEnd();

console.profile("Slices");
blobFastOnIE = new Blob([byteArray], { type: 'text/plain'});
console.profileEnd();

So I decided to include both methods described by Jeremy in one function. Credits go to him for this.

function base64toBlob(base64Data, contentType, sliceSize) {

    var byteCharacters,
        byteArray,
        byteNumbers,
        blobData,
        blob;

    contentType = contentType || '';

    byteCharacters = atob(base64Data);

    // Get BLOB data sliced or not
    blobData = sliceSize ? getBlobDataSliced() : getBlobDataAtOnce();

    blob = new Blob(blobData, { type: contentType });

    return blob;


    /*
     * Get BLOB data in one slice.
     * => Fast in Internet Explorer on new Blob(...)
     */
    function getBlobDataAtOnce() {
        byteNumbers = new Array(byteCharacters.length);

        for (var i = 0; i < byteCharacters.length; i++) {
            byteNumbers[i] = byteCharacters.charCodeAt(i);
        }

        byteArray = new Uint8Array(byteNumbers);

        return [byteArray];
    }

    /*
     * Get BLOB data in multiple slices.
     * => Slow in Internet Explorer on new Blob(...)
     */
    function getBlobDataSliced() {

        var slice,
            byteArrays = [];

        for (var offset = 0; offset < byteCharacters.length; offset += sliceSize) {
            slice = byteCharacters.slice(offset, offset + sliceSize);

            byteNumbers = new Array(slice.length);

            for (var i = 0; i < slice.length; i++) {
                byteNumbers[i] = slice.charCodeAt(i);
            }

            byteArray = new Uint8Array(byteNumbers);

            // Add slice
            byteArrays.push(byteArray);
        }

        return byteArrays;
    }
}