How can you encode a string to Base64 in JavaScript?

Question

I have a PHP script that can encode a PNG image to a Base64 string.

I\'d like to do the same thing using JavaScript. I know how to open files, but I\'m not sure how

Answer 1

I needed encoding of an UTF-8 string as base64 for a project of mine. Most of the answers here don't seem to properly handle UTF-16 surrogate pairs when converting to UTF-8 so, for completion sake, I will post my solution:

function strToUTF8Base64(str) {

    function decodeSurrogatePair(hi, lo) {
        var resultChar = 0x010000;
        resultChar += lo - 0xDC00;
        resultChar += (hi - 0xD800) << 10;
        return resultChar;
    }

    var bytes = [0, 0, 0];
    var byteIndex = 0;
    var result = [];

    function output(s) {
        result.push(s);
    }

    function emitBase64() {

        var digits =
                'ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ' +
                'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz' +
                '0123456789+/';

        function toDigit(value) {
            return digits[value];
        }

        // --Byte 0--    --Byte 1--    --Byte 2--
        // 1111  1122    2222  3333    3344  4444

        var d1 = toDigit(bytes[0] >> 2);
        var d2 = toDigit(
            ((bytes[0] & 0x03) << 4) |
            (bytes[1] >> 4));
        var d3 = toDigit(
            ((bytes[1] & 0x0F) << 2) |
            (bytes[2] >> 6));
        var d4 = toDigit(
            bytes[2] & 0x3F);

        if (byteIndex === 1) {
            output(d1 + d2 + '==');
        }
        else if (byteIndex === 2) {
            output(d1 + d2 + d3 + '=');
        }
        else {
            output(d1 + d2 + d3 + d4);
        }
    }

    function emit(chr) {
        bytes[byteIndex++] = chr;
        if (byteIndex == 3) {
            emitBase64();
            bytes[0] = 0;
            bytes[1] = 0;
            bytes[2] = 0;
            byteIndex = 0;
        }
    }

    function emitLast() {
        if (byteIndex > 0) {
            emitBase64();
        }
    }

    // Converts the string to UTF8:

    var i, chr;
    var hi, lo;
    for (i = 0; i < str.length; i++) {
        chr = str.charCodeAt(i);

        // Test and decode surrogate pairs in the string
        if (chr >= 0xD800 && chr <= 0xDBFF) {
            hi = chr;
            lo = str.charCodeAt(i + 1);
            if (lo >= 0xDC00 && lo <= 0xDFFF) {
                chr = decodeSurrogatePair(hi, lo);
                i++;
            }
        }

        // Encode the character as UTF-8.
        if (chr < 0x80) {
            emit(chr);
        }
        else if (chr < 0x0800) {
            emit((chr >> 6) | 0xC0);
            emit(((chr >> 0) & 0x3F) | 0x80);
        }
        else if (chr < 0x10000) {
            emit((chr >> 12) | 0xE0);
            emit(((chr >>  6) & 0x3F) | 0x80);
            emit(((chr >>  0) & 0x3F) | 0x80);
        }
        else if (chr < 0x110000) {
            emit((chr >> 18) | 0xF0);
            emit(((chr >> 12) & 0x3F) | 0x80);
            emit(((chr >>  6) & 0x3F) | 0x80);
            emit(((chr >>  0) & 0x3F) | 0x80);
        }
    }

    emitLast();

    return result.join('');
}

Note that the code is not thoroughly tested. I tested some inputs, including things like strToUTF8Base64('衠衢蠩蠨') and compared with the output of an online encoding tool (https://www.base64encode.org/).

Answer 2

While a bit more work, if you want a high performance native solution there are some HTML5 functions you can use.

If you can get your data into a Blob, then you can use the FileReader.readAsDataURL() function to get a data:// URL and chop off the front of it to get at the base64 data.

You may have to do further processing however to urldecode the data, as I'm not sure whether + characters are escaped or not for the data:// URL, but this should be pretty trivial.

Answer 3

From the comments (by SET and Stefan Steiger) below the accepted answer, here is a quick summary of how to encode/decode a string to/from base64 without need of a library.

str = "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog";
b64 = btoa(unescape(encodeURIComponent(str)));
str = decodeURIComponent(escape(window.atob(b64)));

Demo

(uses jQuery library, but not for encode/decode)

str = "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog";

$('input').val(str);

$('#btnConv').click(function(){
  var txt = $('input').val();
  var b64 = btoa(unescape(encodeURIComponent(txt)));
  $('input').val(b64);
  $('#btnDeConv').show();
});
$('#btnDeConv').click(function(){
  var b64 = $('input').val();
  var txt = decodeURIComponent(escape(window.atob(b64)));
  $('input').val(txt);
});

#btnDeConv{display:none;}

<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.1.1/jquery.min.js"></script>

<input type="text" />
<button id="btnConv">Convert</button>
<button id="btnDeConv">DeConvert</button>

Answer 4

I +1'ed Sunny's answer, but I wanted to contribute back a few changes I made for my own project in case anyone should find it useful. Basically I've just cleaned up the original code a little so JSLint doesn't complain quite as much, and I made the methods marked as private in the comments actually private. I also added two methods I needed in my own project, namely decodeToHex and encodeFromHex.

The code:

var Base64 = (function() {
    "use strict";

    var _keyStr = "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789+/=";

    var _utf8_encode = function (string) {

        var utftext = "", c, n;

        string = string.replace(/\r\n/g,"\n");

        for (n = 0; n < string.length; n++) {

            c = string.charCodeAt(n);

            if (c < 128) {

                utftext += String.fromCharCode(c);

            } else if((c > 127) && (c < 2048)) {

                utftext += String.fromCharCode((c >> 6) | 192);
                utftext += String.fromCharCode((c & 63) | 128);

            } else {

                utftext += String.fromCharCode((c >> 12) | 224);
                utftext += String.fromCharCode(((c >> 6) & 63) | 128);
                utftext += String.fromCharCode((c & 63) | 128);

            }

        }

        return utftext;
    };

    var _utf8_decode = function (utftext) {
        var string = "", i = 0, c = 0, c1 = 0, c2 = 0;

        while ( i < utftext.length ) {

            c = utftext.charCodeAt(i);

            if (c < 128) {

                string += String.fromCharCode(c);
                i++;

            } else if((c > 191) && (c < 224)) {

                c1 = utftext.charCodeAt(i+1);
                string += String.fromCharCode(((c & 31) << 6) | (c1 & 63));
                i += 2;

            } else {

                c1 = utftext.charCodeAt(i+1);
                c2 = utftext.charCodeAt(i+2);
                string += String.fromCharCode(((c & 15) << 12) | ((c1 & 63) << 6) | (c2 & 63));
                i += 3;

            }

        }

        return string;
    };

    var _hexEncode = function(input) {
        var output = '', i;

        for(i = 0; i < input.length; i++) {
            output += input.charCodeAt(i).toString(16);
        }

        return output;
    };

    var _hexDecode = function(input) {
        var output = '', i;

        if(input.length % 2 > 0) {
            input = '0' + input;
        }

        for(i = 0; i < input.length; i = i + 2) {
            output += String.fromCharCode(parseInt(input.charAt(i) + input.charAt(i + 1), 16));
        }

        return output;
    };

    var encode = function (input) {
        var output = "", chr1, chr2, chr3, enc1, enc2, enc3, enc4, i = 0;

        input = _utf8_encode(input);

        while (i < input.length) {

            chr1 = input.charCodeAt(i++);
            chr2 = input.charCodeAt(i++);
            chr3 = input.charCodeAt(i++);

            enc1 = chr1 >> 2;
            enc2 = ((chr1 & 3) << 4) | (chr2 >> 4);
            enc3 = ((chr2 & 15) << 2) | (chr3 >> 6);
            enc4 = chr3 & 63;

            if (isNaN(chr2)) {
                enc3 = enc4 = 64;
            } else if (isNaN(chr3)) {
                enc4 = 64;
            }

            output += _keyStr.charAt(enc1);
            output += _keyStr.charAt(enc2);
            output += _keyStr.charAt(enc3);
            output += _keyStr.charAt(enc4);

        }

        return output;
    };

    var decode = function (input) {
        var output = "", chr1, chr2, chr3, enc1, enc2, enc3, enc4, i = 0;

        input = input.replace(/[^A-Za-z0-9\+\/\=]/g, "");

        while (i < input.length) {

            enc1 = _keyStr.indexOf(input.charAt(i++));
            enc2 = _keyStr.indexOf(input.charAt(i++));
            enc3 = _keyStr.indexOf(input.charAt(i++));
            enc4 = _keyStr.indexOf(input.charAt(i++));

            chr1 = (enc1 << 2) | (enc2 >> 4);
            chr2 = ((enc2 & 15) << 4) | (enc3 >> 2);
            chr3 = ((enc3 & 3) << 6) | enc4;

            output += String.fromCharCode(chr1);

            if (enc3 !== 64) {
                output += String.fromCharCode(chr2);
            }
            if (enc4 !== 64) {
                output += String.fromCharCode(chr3);
            }

        }

        return _utf8_decode(output);
    };

    var decodeToHex = function(input) {
        return _hexEncode(decode(input));
    };

    var encodeFromHex = function(input) {
        return encode(_hexDecode(input));
    };

    return {
        'encode': encode,
        'decode': decode,
        'decodeToHex': decodeToHex,
        'encodeFromHex': encodeFromHex
    };
}());

Answer 5

For newer browsers to encode Uint8Array to string, and decode string to Uint8Array.

const base64 = {
    decode: s => Uint8Array.from(atob(s), c => c.charCodeAt(0)),
    encode: b => btoa(String.fromCharCode(...new Uint8Array(b)))
};

For Node.js you can use the following to encode string, Buffer, or Uint8Array to string, and decode from string, Buffer, or Uint8Array to Buffer.

const base64 = {
    decode: s => Buffer.from(s, 'base64'),
    encode: b => Buffer.from(b).toString('base64')
};

Answer 6

if you need to encode HTML image object, you can write simple function like:

function getBase64Image(img) {  
  var canvas = document.createElement("canvas");  
  canvas.width = img.width;  
  canvas.height = img.height;  
  var ctx = canvas.getContext("2d");  
  ctx.drawImage(img, 0, 0);  
  var dataURL = canvas.toDataURL("image/png");  
  // escape data:image prefix
  return dataURL.replace(/^data:image\/(png|jpg);base64,/, "");  
  // or just return dataURL
  // return dataURL
}  

To get base64 of image by id:

function getBase64ImageById(id){  
  return getBase64Image(document.getElementById(id));  
} 

more here