Base64 Encoding Explained

Why do I need Base64 encoding?

Base64 is an encoding scheme used to represent binary data in an ASCII format. This is useful when binary data needs to be sent over media that are usually designed to handle textual data. Concrete examples would be sending images in an XML file or in an email attachment.

How does Base64 encoding work?

Bytes forming the data are broken into buffers of 24 bits (3 bytes at a time). The resulting buffer of 3 bytes is then broken in 4 packs of 6 bits each. Those 6 bits form a number corresponding to the index in the character set supported by Base64 (A-Z, a-z, 0-9, + and /). If the number of bytes are not in numbers of three, then padding is used; == for 1 byte and = for 2 bytes.

How can I embed Base64 encoded resource directly into HTML, XML and CSS files?

Listed here are a few examples on how to embed Base64 resources within different web documents.