base64_decode

(PHP 4, PHP 5, PHP 7)

base64_decode — Decodes data encoded with MIME base64

Description

string base64_decode ( string $data [, bool $strict = false ] )

Decodes a base64 encoded data.

Parameters

data: The encoded data.
strict: Returns FALSE if input contains character from outside the base64 alphabet.

Return Values

Returns the original data or FALSE on failure. The returned data may be binary.

Changelog

Version	Description
5.2.0	`strict` added

Examples

Example #1 base64_decode() example


<?php
$str = 'VGhpcyBpcyBhbiBlbmNvZGVkIHN0cmluZw==';
echo base64_decode($str);
?>

The above example will output:

This is an encoded string

User Contributed Notes

walf

6 months ago


Base64 for URL parameters/filenames, that adhere to RFC 4648.
Defaults to dropping the padding on encode since it's not required for decoding, and keeps the URL free of % encodings.

<?php
function base64url_encode($data, $pad = null) {
    $data = str_replace(array('+', '/'), array('-', '_'), base64_encode($data));
    if (!$pad) {
        $data = rtrim($data, '=');
    }
    return $data;
}
function base64url_decode($data) {
    return base64_decode(str_replace(array('-', '_'), array('+', '/'), $data));
}

winkelnkemper at googlemail dot com

5 years ago


If you want to save data that is derived from a Javascript canvas.toDataURL() function, you have to convert blanks into plusses. If you do not do that, the decoded data is corrupted:

<?php
  $encodedData = str_replace(' ','+',$encodedData);
  $decocedData = base64_decode($encodedData);
?>

martinstaemmler at gmx dot net

6 years ago


I had some trouble trying to let base64_decode decode base64-strings longer than ~5k chars.



The base64-decoding function is a homomorphism between modulo 4 and modulo 3-length segmented strings. That motivates a divide and conquer approach: Split the encoded string into substrings counting modulo 4 chars, then decode each substring and concatenate all of them.



Then instead of 



<?php $decoded = base64_decode($encoded); ?>



for big $encoded strings, it's saver to use



<?php

$decoded = "";

for ($i=0; $i < ceil(strlen($encoded)/256); $i++)

   $decoded = $decoded . base64_decode(substr($encoded,$i*256,256));

?>



where 256 can be replaced by a sufficiently small modulo 4 natural.

Starson

9 years ago


To expand on Jes' post:

The change took place between 5.0.5 and 5.1.0.  Exactly where I don't know or care.

In short php <= 5.0.5's base64_decode( $string ) will assume that a space is meant to be a + sign where php >= 5.1.0's base64_decode( $string ) will no longer make that assumption.  I did not see this noted in the change log.

Please note that, as of this writing, mb_convert_encoding( $string, "UTF-8", "BASE64" ) still behaves as base64_decode( $string ) did in php <= 5.0.5 regardless of the version of php you are running.

twm at twmacinta dot com

7 years ago


To follow up on Starson's post, PHP was changed to no longer treat a space as if it were a plus sign in CVS revision 1.43.2.1, which corresponds to PHP 5.1.0.  You can see what happened with a diff to branch point 1.43 at:

http://cvs.php.net/viewvc.cgi/php-src/ext/standard/base64.c

The CVS log indicates that this change was made to fix bug #34214 (base64_decode() does not properly ignore whitespace).

It would seem from the comment preceding the code which was removed that the treatment of the space as if it were the plus sign was actually intentional at one time:

    When Base64 gets POSTed, all pluses are interpreted as spaces.
    This line changes them back.  It's not exactly the Base64 spec,
    but it is completely compatible with it (the spec says that spaces
    are invalid).  This will also save many people considerable
    headache.

    if (ch == ' ') ch = '+';

However, RFC 3548 states that characters not in the Base64 alphabet should either be ignored or cause the implementation to reject the encoding and RFC 2045 says they should be ignored.  So the original code was unfortunately not fully compatible with the spec or other implementations.  It may have also masked problems with code not properly escaping POST variables.

mcalwell

7 years ago


I had a problem testing whether an imap message body was base64 encoded on a pre 5.2.* server.  I had been using this function on a post 5.2 server.

I found that the function imap_base64() returns FALSE on failing to decode a string, and that I could use that to check instead.

<?php
if(imap_base64($body)) $body = imap_base64($body);
?>

nicolem2005 at gmail dot com

4 years ago


base64_decode seems to fail when decoding big files/strings. I had an issue decoding a 7MB image file. Here is a solution that worked for me:

$decodedstring=base64_decode(chunk_split($encodedstring));

Tom

9 years ago


This function supports "base64url" as described in Section 5 of RFC 4648, "Base 64 Encoding with URL and Filename Safe Alphabet"

    <?php
    function base64url_decode($base64url)
    {
        $base64 = strtr($base64url, '-_', '+/');
        $plainText = base64_decode($base64);
        return ($plainText);
    }
    ?>

Klaus Fehrenbacher

13 years ago


this script can correct the bug



<?php

$enc = chunk_split(preg_replace('!\015\012|\015|\012!','',$enc));

$enc = base64_decode($enc);

?>

markandrewslade at gmail dot com

2 months ago


The docs don't make this explicitly clear, but if you omit `$strict` or set it to `false` then invalid characters in the encoded input will be silently ignored.

<?php

echo base64_decode('VGhpcyBpcyBhbiBlbmNvZGVkIHN0cmluZw=='); // "This is an encoded string"
echo base64_decode('$VGhpcyBpcyBhbiBlbmNvZGVkIHN0cmluZw=='); // "This is an encoded string"
echo base64_decode('$VGhpcyBpcyBhbiBlbmNvZGVkIHN0cmluZw==', true); // false

?>

dimagolov at yahoo dot com

6 years ago


Here is function to decode Base 62 (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_62) string to number. It is used by MTA in message id, e.g. by Exim
<?php
function base62_decode($str) {
    $ret= 0;
    for ($i= 0, $l= strlen($str); $i < $l; $i++) {
        $val= ord($str[$i]);
        if (ctype_digit($str[$i]))
            $val-= ord('0');
        else if (ctype_upper($str[$i]))
            $val-= ord('A') - 10;
        else if (ctype_lower($str[$i]))
            $val-= ord('a') - 36;
        else
            $val= 0;
        $ret= $ret * 62 + $val;
    }
    return $ret;
}
?>

debug

8 years ago


@morgangalpin att gmail dotty com

A better implementation would be the following regular expression:

^[a-zA-Z0-9/+]*={0,2}$

Which will also detect the usage of = or == at the end of the string (and only end).

If this regex isn't following proper RFC guidelines, please comment on it.

A function geared specifically toward this:

<?php

function is_base64_encoded()
    {
        if (preg_match('%^[a-zA-Z0-9/+]*={0,2}$%', $data)) {
            return TRUE;
        } else {
            return FALSE;
        }
    };

is_base64_encoded("iash21iawhdj98UH3"); // true
is_base64_encoded("#iu3498r"); // false
is_base64_encoded("asiudfh9w=8uihf"); // false
is_base64_encoded("a398UIhnj43f/1!+sadfh3w84hduihhjw=="); // true

?>

nsayer at kfu dot com

14 years ago


I used to do uudecode as a C module, but I've discovered a really fast way to do it in PHP. Here it is:



<?php

function uudecode($encode) {

  $b64chars="ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ\

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789+/";



  $encode = preg_replace("/^./m","",$encode);

  $encode = preg_replace("/\n/m","",$encode);

  for($i=0; $i<strlen($encode); $i++) {

    if ($encode[$i] == '`')

      $encode[$i] = ' ';

    $encode[$i] = $b64chars[ord($encode[$i])-32];

  }



  while(strlen($encode) % 4)

    $encode .= "=";



  return base64_decode($encode);

}

?>



This is the PHP equivalent to perl's unpack("u",___). That is, you need to strip the 'begin' and 'end' lines from the typical uuencoded file.

tobias at silverxnet dot de

12 years ago


I was wondering how to decode attached images within mails. Basically they are mostly JPEG files, so it was obviously to write a function that decodes JPEG images.

I guess the plainest way to do so was the following:



<?php

function base64_to_jpeg( $inputfile, $outputfile ) {

  /* read data (binary) */

  $ifp = fopen( $inputfile, "rb" );

  $imageData = fread( $ifp, filesize( $inputfile ) );

  fclose( $ifp );

  /* encode & write data (binary) */

  $ifp = fopen( $outputfile, "wb" );

  fwrite( $ifp, base64_decode( $imageData ) );

  fclose( $ifp );

  /* return output filename */

  return( $outputfile );

}

?>



This function decodes the given inputfile (a filename!) and saves it to the given outputfile (a filename as well) and then returns the output filename for further usage (e.g. redirect, imagejpeg() and so on).

I thought that might be helpful.

zmorris at zsculpt dot com

8 years ago


Here is a drop-in replacement for base64_decode(), based on a faster version of morgangalpin's code:



<?php

// workaround for bug in php 4.3.11 through 4.4.7, 5.1.2 through 5.2.4 and perhaps others (http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=37244)

function    base64_decode_fix( $data, $strict = false )

{

    if( $strict )

        if( preg_match( '![^a-zA-Z0-9/+=]!', $data ) )

            return( false );

    

    return( base64_decode( $data ) );

}

?>

alvaro at demogracia dot com

7 years ago


You can do partial decoding (e.g. from buffered input streams) if you choose a chunk length that is multiple of 4:

<?php

$encoded = base64_encode('The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog');
for($i=0, $len=strlen($encoded); $i<$len; $i+=4){
    echo base64_decode( substr($encoded, $i, 4) );
}

?>

4 encoded chars represent 3 original chars. The "=" character is used as padding.

base64_decode

Description

Parameters

Return Values

Changelog

Examples

See Also

User Contributed Notes