# `base64` — Base16, Base32, Base64, Base85 Data Encodings

Source code: Lib/base64.py

This module provides functions for encoding binary data to printable ASCII characters and decoding such encodings back to binary data. This includes the encodings specified in RFC 4648 (Base64, Base32 and Base16) and the non-standard Base85 encodings.

There are two interfaces provided by this module. The modern interface supports encoding bytes-like objects to ASCII `bytes`, and decoding bytes-like objects or strings containing ASCII to `bytes`. Both base-64 alphabets defined in RFC 4648 (normal, and URL- and filesystem-safe) are supported.

The legacy interface does not support decoding from strings, but it does provide functions for encoding and decoding to and from file objects. It only supports the Base64 standard alphabet, and it adds newlines every 76 characters as per RFC 2045. Note that if you are looking for RFC 2045 support you probably want to be looking at the `email` package instead.

Changed in version 3.3: ASCII-only Unicode strings are now accepted by the decoding functions of the modern interface.

Changed in version 3.4: Any bytes-like objects are now accepted by all encoding and decoding functions in this module. Ascii85/Base85 support added.

## RFC 4648 Encodings

The RFC 4648 encodings are suitable for encoding binary data so that it can be safely sent by email, used as parts of URLs, or included as part of an HTTP POST request.

base64.b64encode(s, altchars=None, *, padded=True, wrapcol=0)

  Encode the bytes-like object s using Base64 and return the encoded `bytes`.

  Optional altchars must be a bytes-like object of length 2 which specifies an alternative alphabet for the `+` and `/` characters. This allows an application to e.g. generate URL or filesystem safe Base64 strings. The default is `None`, for which the standard Base64 alphabet is used.

  If padded is true (default), pad the encoded data with the ‘=’ character to a size multiple of 4. If padded is false, do not add the pad characters.

  If wrapcol is non-zero, insert a newline (`b'\n'`) character after at most every wrapcol characters. If wrapcol is zero (default), do not insert any newlines.

  Changed in version 3.15: Added the padded and wrapcol parameters.

base64.b64decode(s, altchars=None, validate=False, *, padded=True)
base64.b64decode(s, altchars=None, validate=True, *, ignorechars, padded=True)

  Decode the Base64 encoded bytes-like object or ASCII string s and return the decoded `bytes`.

  Optional altchars must be a bytes-like object or ASCII string of length 2 which specifies the alternative alphabet used instead of the `+` and `/` characters.

  If padded is true, the last group of 4 base 64 alphabet characters must be padded with the ‘=’ character. If padded is false, padding is neither required nor recognized: the ‘=’ character is not treated as padding but as a non-alphabet character, which means it is silently discarded when validate is false, or causes an `Error` when validate is true unless b’=’ is included in ignorechars.

  A `binascii.Error` exception is raised if s is incorrectly padded.

  If ignorechars is specified, it should be a bytes-like object containing characters to ignore from the input when validate is true. If ignorechars contains the pad character `'='`, the pad characters presented before the end of the encoded data and the excess pad characters will be ignored. The default value of validate is `True` if ignorechars is specified, `False` otherwise.

  If validate is false, characters that are neither in the normal base-64 alphabet nor (if ignorechars is not specified) the alternative alphabet are discarded prior to the padding check, but the `+` and `/` characters keep their meaning if they are not in altchars (they will be discarded in future Python versions).

  If validate is true, these non-alphabet characters in the input result in a `binascii.Error`.

  For more information about the strict base64 check, see `binascii.a2b_base64()`

  Changed in version 3.15: Added the ignorechars and padded parameters.

  Deprecated since version 3.15: Accepting the `+` and `/` characters with an alternative alphabet is now deprecated.

base64.standard_b64encode(s)

  Encode bytes-like object s using the standard Base64 alphabet and return the encoded `bytes`.

base64.standard_b64decode(s)

  Decode bytes-like object or ASCII string s using the standard Base64 alphabet and return the decoded `bytes`.

base64.urlsafe_b64encode(s, *, padded=True)

  Encode bytes-like object s using the URL- and filesystem-safe alphabet, which substitutes `-` instead of `+` and `_` instead of `/` in the standard Base64 alphabet, and return the encoded `bytes`. The result can still contain `=` if padded is true (default).

  Changed in version 3.15: Added the padded parameter.

base64.urlsafe_b64decode(s, *, padded=False)

  Decode bytes-like object or ASCII string s using the URL- and filesystem-safe alphabet, which substitutes `-` instead of `+` and `_` instead of `/` in the standard Base64 alphabet, and return the decoded `bytes`.

  Changed in version 3.15: Added the padded parameter. Padding of input is no longer required by default.

  Deprecated since version 3.15: Accepting the `+` and `/` characters is now deprecated.

base64.b32encode(s, *, padded=True, wrapcol=0)

  Encode the bytes-like object s using Base32 and return the encoded `bytes`.

  If padded is true (default), pad the encoded data with the ‘=’ character to a size multiple of 8. If padded is false, do not add the pad characters.

  If wrapcol is non-zero, insert a newline (`b'\n'`) character after at most every wrapcol characters. If wrapcol is zero (default), do not add any newlines.

  Changed in version 3.15: Added the padded and wrapcol parameters.

base64.b32decode(s, casefold=False, map01=None, *, padded=True, ignorechars=b'')

  Decode the Base32 encoded bytes-like object or ASCII string s and return the decoded `bytes`.

  Optional casefold is a flag specifying whether a lowercase alphabet is acceptable as input. For security purposes, the default is `False`.

  RFC 4648 allows for optional mapping of the digit 0 (zero) to the letter O (oh), and for optional mapping of the digit 1 (one) to either the letter I (eye) or letter L (el). The optional argument map01 when not `None`, specifies which letter the digit 1 should be mapped to (when map01 is not `None`, the digit 0 is always mapped to the letter O). For security purposes the default is `None`, so that 0 and 1 are not allowed in the input.

  If padded is true, the last group of 8 base 32 alphabet characters must be padded with the ‘=’ character. If padded is false, padding is neither required nor recognized: the ‘=’ character is not treated as padding but as a non-alphabet character, which means it raises an `Error` unless b’=’ is included in ignorechars.

  ignorechars should be a bytes-like object containing characters to ignore from the input.

  A `binascii.Error` is raised if s is incorrectly padded or if there are non-alphabet characters present in the input.

  Changed in version 3.15: Added the ignorechars and padded parameters.

base64.b32hexencode(s, *, padded=True, wrapcol=0)

  Similar to `b32encode()` but uses the Extended Hex Alphabet, as defined in RFC 4648.

  Added in version 3.10.

  Changed in version 3.15: Added the padded and wrapcol parameters.

base64.b32hexdecode(s, casefold=False, *, padded=True, ignorechars=b'')

  Similar to `b32decode()` but uses the Extended Hex Alphabet, as defined in RFC 4648.

  This version does not allow the digit 0 (zero) to the letter O (oh) and digit 1 (one) to either the letter I (eye) or letter L (el) mappings, all these characters are included in the Extended Hex Alphabet and are not interchangeable.

  Added in version 3.10.

  Changed in version 3.15: Added the ignorechars and padded parameters.

base64.b16encode(s, *, wrapcol=0)

  Encode the bytes-like object s using Base16 and return the encoded `bytes`.

  If wrapcol is non-zero, insert a newline (`b'\n'`) character after at most every wrapcol characters. If wrapcol is zero (default), do not add any newlines.

  Changed in version 3.15: Added the wrapcol parameter.

base64.b16decode(s, casefold=False, *, ignorechars=b'')

  Decode the Base16 encoded bytes-like object or ASCII string s and return the decoded `bytes`.

  Optional casefold is a flag specifying whether a lowercase alphabet is acceptable as input. For security purposes, the default is `False`.

  ignorechars should be a bytes-like object containing characters to ignore from the input.

  A `binascii.Error` is raised if s is incorrectly padded or if there are non-alphabet characters present in the input.

  Changed in version 3.15: Added the ignorechars parameter.

## Base85 Encodings

Base85 encoding is not formally specified but rather a de facto standard, thus different systems perform the encoding differently.

The `a85encode()` and `b85encode()` functions in this module are two implementations of the de facto standard. You should call the function with the Base85 implementation used by the software you intend to work with.

The two functions present in this module differ in how they handle the following:

- Whether to include enclosing `<~` and `~>` markers

- Whether to include newline characters

- The set of ASCII characters used for encoding

- Handling of null bytes

Refer to the documentation of the individual functions for more information.

base64.a85encode(b, *, foldspaces=False, wrapcol=0, pad=False, adobe=False)

  Encode the bytes-like object b using Ascii85 and return the encoded `bytes`.

  foldspaces is an optional flag that uses the special short sequence ‘y’ instead of 4 consecutive spaces (ASCII 0x20) as supported by ‘btoa’. This feature is not supported by the “standard” Ascii85 encoding.

  If wrapcol is non-zero, insert a newline (`b'\n'`) character after at most every wrapcol characters. If wrapcol is zero (default), do not insert any newlines.

  If pad is true, the input is padded with `b'\0'` so its length is a multiple of 4 bytes before encoding. Note that the `btoa` implementation always pads.

  adobe controls whether the encoded byte sequence is framed with `<~` and `~>`, which is used by the Adobe implementation.

  Added in version 3.4.

base64.a85decode(b, *, foldspaces=False, adobe=False, ignorechars=b' \t\n\r\x0b')

  Decode the Ascii85 encoded bytes-like object or ASCII string b and return the decoded `bytes`.

  foldspaces is a flag that specifies whether the ‘y’ short sequence should be accepted as shorthand for 4 consecutive spaces (ASCII 0x20). This feature is not supported by the “standard” Ascii85 encoding.

  adobe controls whether the input sequence is in Adobe Ascii85 format (i.e. is framed with <~ and ~>).

  ignorechars should be a bytes-like object containing characters to ignore from the input. This should only contain whitespace characters, and by default contains all whitespace characters in ASCII.

  Added in version 3.4.

base64.b85encode(b, pad=False, *, wrapcol=0)

  Encode the bytes-like object b using base85 (as used in e.g. git-style binary diffs) and return the encoded `bytes`.

  If pad is true, the input is padded with `b'\0'` so its length is a multiple of 4 bytes before encoding.

  If wrapcol is non-zero, insert a newline (`b'\n'`) character after at most every wrapcol characters. If wrapcol is zero (default), do not add any newlines.

  Added in version 3.4.

  Changed in version 3.15: Added the wrapcol parameter.

base64.b85decode(b, *, ignorechars=b'')

  Decode the base85-encoded bytes-like object or ASCII string b and return the decoded `bytes`. Padding is implicitly removed, if necessary.

  ignorechars should be a bytes-like object containing characters to ignore from the input.

  Added in version 3.4.

  Changed in version 3.15: Added the ignorechars parameter.

base64.z85encode(s, pad=False, *, wrapcol=0)

  Encode the bytes-like object s using Z85 (as used in ZeroMQ) and return the encoded `bytes`. See Z85 specification for more information.

  If pad is true, the input is padded with `b'\0'` so its length is a multiple of 4 bytes before encoding.

  If wrapcol is non-zero, insert a newline (`b'\n'`) character after at most every wrapcol characters. If wrapcol is zero (default), do not add any newlines.

  Added in version 3.13.

  Changed in version 3.15: The pad parameter was added.

  Changed in version 3.15: Added the wrapcol parameter.

base64.z85decode(s, *, ignorechars=b'')

  Decode the Z85-encoded bytes-like object or ASCII string s and return the decoded `bytes`. See Z85 specification for more information.

  ignorechars should be a bytes-like object containing characters to ignore from the input.

  Added in version 3.13.

  Changed in version 3.15: Added the ignorechars parameter.

## Legacy Interface

base64.decode(input, output)

  Decode the contents of the binary input file and write the resulting binary data to the output file. input and output must be file objects. input will be read until `input.readline()` returns an empty bytes object.

base64.decodebytes(s)

  Decode the bytes-like object s, which must contain one or more lines of base64 encoded data, and return the decoded `bytes`.

  Added in version 3.1.

base64.encode(input, output)

  Encode the contents of the binary input file and write the resulting base64 encoded data to the output file. input and output must be file objects. input will be read until `input.read()` returns an empty bytes object. `encode()` inserts a newline character (`b'\n'`) after every 76 bytes of the output, as well as ensuring that the output always ends with a newline, as per RFC 2045 (MIME).

base64.encodebytes(s)

  Encode the bytes-like object s, which can contain arbitrary binary data, and return `bytes` containing the base64-encoded data, with newlines (`b'\n'`) inserted after every 76 bytes of output, and ensuring that there is a trailing newline, as per RFC 2045 (MIME).

  Added in version 3.1.

An example usage of the module:

    >>> import base64
    >>> encoded = base64.b64encode(b'data to be encoded')
    >>> encoded
    b'ZGF0YSB0byBiZSBlbmNvZGVk'
    >>> data = base64.b64decode(encoded)
    >>> data
    b'data to be encoded'

## Security Considerations

A new security considerations section was added to RFC 4648 (section 12); it’s recommended to review the security section for any code deployed to production.

See also

Module `binascii`

  Support module containing ASCII-to-binary and binary-to-ASCII conversions.

RFC 1521 - MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) Part One: Mechanisms for Specifying and Describing the Format of Internet Message Bodies

  Section 5.2, “Base64 Content-Transfer-Encoding,” provides the definition of the base64 encoding.