Decode Base64 data in Java

Question

I have an image that is Base64 encoded. What is the best way to decode that in Java? Hopefully using only the libraries included with Sun Java 6.

Answer 1

Another late answer, but my benchmarking shows that Jetty's implementation of Base64 encoder is pretty fast. Not as fast as MiGBase64 but faster than iHarder Base64.

import org.eclipse.jetty.util.B64Code;

final String decoded = B64Code.decode(encoded, "UTF-8");

I also did some benchmarks:

      library     |    encode    |    decode   
------------------+--------------+-------------
 'MiGBase64'      |  10146001.00 |  6426446.00
 'Jetty B64Code'  |   8846191.00 |  3101361.75
 'iHarder Base64' |   3259590.50 |  2505280.00
 'Commons-Codec'  |    241318.04 |   255179.96

These are runs/sec so higher is better.