Base64 is a freeware way of encoding 8-bit characters using only ASCII printable characters similar to UUENCODE. UUENCODE embeds a filename where BASE64 does not. You will see BASE64 used in encoding digital certificates, in encoding user:password string in an Authorization: header for HTTP. The spec is described in RFC 2045. For more details see http://mindprod.com/jgloss/base64.html Don't confuse Base64 with x-www-form-urlencoded which is handled by java.net.URLEncoder.encode/decode or Base64u. Base64 armouring uses only the characters A-Z a-z 0-9 +/=. This makes it suitable for encoding binary data as SQL strings, that will work no matter what the encoding. Unfortunately + / and = all have special meaning in URLs. Base64u gets around this problem. It is a variant on Base64 that uses - _ and * in preference to + / and =, so that it can be used in URLEncoded contexts with or without URLEncoding. Use base64 like this: // Base64 armouring import com.mindprod.base64.Base64; ... // sample byte array to encode byte[] toSend = { (byte)0xfc, (byte)0x0f, (byte)0xc0}; // create encoder object Base64 base64 = new Base64(); base64.setLineLength( 72 ); // default // encoding a byte[] String send = base64.encoder( toSend ); // decoding a byte[] byte[] reconstituted = base64.decoder( sent ); use Base64u the same way: // Base64u armouring import com.mindprod.base64.Base64u; ... // sample byte array to encode byte[] toSend = { (byte)0xfc, (byte)0x0f, (byte)0xc0}; // create encoder object Base64u base64u = new Base64u(); base64u.setLineLength( 72 ); // default // encoding a byte[] String send = base64u.encoder( toSend ); // decoding a byte[] byte[] reconstituted = base64u.decoder( sent ); For an example that starts and ends with a String, see Example.java to run: java.exe com.mindprod.base64.Example. Base64 is licensed as freeware, full size of the download is 0.51 MB. You can download a free version of Base64 by following download link at Free Downloads section of this page. Base64 is developed or distributed by Canadian Mind Products and is listed under web development java & javascript.
