Why use Base64 Encoding?

What is Base64 encoding?

• Given a stream of binary bits, it will encode 6-bits to a character from a set of 2 pow 6 (64 chracters).
• Example “abcd”, the ASCII representation is 65666768.
• [1000001][1000010][1000011][1000100]
• Base64 would pics six continuous bits
• 100000|| 110000|| 101000|| 011100||0100xx here xx would be 00 (padding)
• gwocQ

Why use base64 encoding?

• Transferring binary data in URLs
• Tranferring binary data such as images as text
• Transmit and store text that might cause delimiter collision.
  • Example is a random string followed by a delimiter (_) and a pattern and the code logic searches the delimiter to seperate the pattern.
  • The _ can appear in the generated random string too.
  • So encoding the random string in base64 would avoid such case.
  • Embed image in a XML