Decoding base64 while using GitHub API to Download a File

Question

I am using the GitHub API to download a file from GitHub. I have been able to successfully authenticate as well as get a response from github, and see a base64 encoded stri

Answer 1

I experimented a bit and found a solution by using a different base64 decoding library as follows:

var base64 = require('js-base64').Base64;
var contents = base64.decode(res.content);

I am not sure if it is mandatory to have an encoded string length divisible by 4 (clearly my 15263 character length string is not divisible by 4) but the alternate library decoded the string properly.

A second solution which I also found to work is specific to how to use the GitHub API. By adding the following to the GitHub API call header, I was also able to get the decoded file contents:

'accept': 'application/vnd.github.VERSION.raw'