How do I encode and decode a base64 string?

Question

1. How do I return a base64 encoded string given a string?

2. How do I decode a base64 encoded string into a string?

Answer 1

Based on the answers by Andrew Fox and Cebe, I turned it around and made them string extensions instead of Base64String extensions.

public static class StringExtensions
{
    public static string ToBase64(this string text)
    {
        return ToBase64(text, Encoding.UTF8);
    }

    public static string ToBase64(this string text, Encoding encoding)
    {
        if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(text))
        {
            return text;
        }

        byte[] textAsBytes = encoding.GetBytes(text);
        return Convert.ToBase64String(textAsBytes);
    }

    public static bool TryParseBase64(this string text, out string decodedText)
    {
        return TryParseBase64(text, Encoding.UTF8, out decodedText);
    }

    public static bool TryParseBase64(this string text, Encoding encoding, out string decodedText)
    {
        if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(text))
        {
            decodedText = text;
            return false;
        }

        try
        {
            byte[] textAsBytes = Convert.FromBase64String(text);
            decodedText = encoding.GetString(textAsBytes);
            return true;
        }
        catch (Exception)
        {
            decodedText = null;
            return false;
        }
    }
}