[993] Base64

Base64 is a binary-to-text encoding scheme that allows binary data to be represented as a sequence of printable ASCII characters. It achieves this by translating binary data into a radix-64 representation. Here’s how it works:

Binary Data Representation: Base64 encoding is commonly used when there’s a need to transmit binary data over media that don’t handle binary data correctly. It’s designed to deal with textual data belonging to the 7-bit US-ASCII charset. For example, email (SMTP) was traditionally designed to work with plain text data in the 7-bit US-ASCII character set. Although it was later extended to support non-US-ASCII text messages and non-text messages (such as audio and images), it’s still recommended to encode the data to the ASCII charset for backward compatibility.
Safe Transmission: Base64 encoding encodes any binary data or non-ASCII text data into a printable ASCII format. This ensures safe transmission over any communication channel. For instance, when you send an email containing an image to a friend, your email software Base64-encodes the image and inserts the equivalent text into the message. The friend’s email software then Base64-decodes the encoded text to restore the original binary image¹.

In summary, Base64 encoding is a widely used technique for representing binary data as text, making it suitable for safe transmission and storage across various systems and protocols².