Saving a Base64 string to disk as a binary using PHP

Question

As a \"look under the covers\" tutorial for myself I am building a PHP script to gather emails from a POP3 mailbox. While attempting to make use of binary attachments I am

Answer 1

If you have a lot of data to write out that needs to be decoded before writing I would suggest using stream filters so decode the data as you write it...

$fh = fopen('where_you_are_writing', 'wb');
stream_filter_append($fh, 'convert.base64-decode');

// Do a lot of writing here. It will be automatically decoded from base64.

fclose($h);

Answer 2

While reinventing the wheel has some entertainment and educational value, I would try to resist the temptation: Mailparse, Mail_mimeDecode

Answer 3

For big base64 strings from a DB you need use load()

$imgdata = $FromDB['BASE64']->load();
$imgdata =  base64_decode($imgdata);
file_put_contents($fileName, $imgdata);

Answer 4

Chop off first and last line, base64decode and save under given filename.

done.

Answer 5

Pass the data to base64_decode() to get the binary data, write it out to a file with file_put_contents()

Answer 6

function base64_decode_file($data)
{
    if(preg_match('/^data\:([a-zA-Z]+\/[a-zA-Z]+);base64\,([a-zA-Z0-9\+\/]+\=*)$/', $data, $matches)) {
        return [
                'mime' => $matches[1],
                'data' => base64_decode($matches[2]),
        ];
    }
    return false;
}