How to Encode And Decode Base64 and Base64Url In Flutter?

How to Encode And Decode Base64 and Base64Url In Flutter?

Base64 is ubiquitous on the Internet right now. Sometimes it seems like every request, every URL, and every file is being encoded in base64 format! As a programmer, base64 certainly feels like a daily fact of life. So in today’s article, We will take a dive into learning how to Encode And Decode Base64 and Base64Url In Flutter.

What is base64 encoding?

Base64 is a binary to ASCII encoding scheme. So it is designed as a way to transfer binary data reliably across channels that have limited support for different content types.

A base64 encoded string looks like this:

V2hhdCBoYXBwZW5zIHdoZW4geW91IGJhc2U2NCgpPw==

Base64 characters only use the same 64 characters that are present in most character sets.

How to Encode And Decode Base64 and Base64Url In Flutter ??

The dart:convert library contains an encoder and decoder for Base64 and Base64Url. However, they encode and decode Lists of integers, so for strings you also need to encode and decode in UTF-8. Rather than doing these two encodings separately, you can combine them with a fuse.

So you need to have the following import:

import 'dart:convert';

Base64

String credentials = "username:password";
Codec<String, String> stringToBase64 = utf8.fuse(base64);
String encoded = stringToBase64.encode(credentials);      // dXNlcm5hbWU6cGFzc3dvcmQ=
String decoded = stringToBase64.decode(encoded);

Note that this is equivalent to:

String encoded = base64.encode(utf8.encode(credentials)); // dXNlcm5hbWU6cGFzc3dvcmQ=
String decoded = utf8.decode(base64.decode(encoded));     //

Base64Url

String credentials = "username:password";
Codec<String, String> stringToBase64Url = utf8.fuse(base64Url);
String encoded = stringToBase64Url.encode(credentials);      // dXNlcm5hbWU6cGFzc3dvcmQ=
String decoded = stringToBase64Url.decode(encoded);

So again, this is equivalent to:

String encoded = base64Url.encode(utf8.encode(credentials)); // dXNlcm5hbWU6cGFzc3dvcmQ=
String decoded = utf8.decode(base64Url.decode(encoded));     /

See also

• RCF 4648
• String based data encoding: Base64 vs Base64url

Decoding base64

To decode base64, you simply have to reverse the above operation:

• First, you remove any padding characters from the end of the encoded string.
• Then, you translate each base64 character back to their six-bit binary representation.
• Finally, you divide the bits into byte-sized (eight-bit) chunks and translate the data back to its original format.

Conclusion:

Let me know how do you encode and decode Base64 and Base64Url in flutter in the comments below.

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