Adobe ColdFusion 8

ToBase64

Description

Calculates the Base64 representation of a string or binary object. The Base64 format uses printable characters, allowing binary data to be sent in forms and e-mail, and stored in a database or file.

Returns

The Base64 representation of a string or binary object.

Category

Conversion functions, String functions

Function syntax

ToBase64(string or binary_object[, encoding])

See also

  • BinaryEncode for converstion of binary data to base64
  • cffile for information about loading and reading binary data
  • cfwddx for information about serializing and deserializing binary data
  • IsBinary and ToBinary for checking for binary data and converting a Base64 object to binary format

History

ColdFusion MX: Added the encoding parameter.

Parameters

Parameter

Description
string or binary_object

A string, the name of a string, or a binary object.
encoding

For a string, defines how characters are represented in a byte array. The following list includes commonly used values:

  • utf-8
  • iso-8859-1
  • windows-1252
  • us-ascii
  • shift_jis
  • iso-2022-jp
  • euc-jp
  • euc-kr
  • big5
  • euc-cn
  • utf-16

For more information on character encoding, see: www.w3.org/International/O-charset.html.

The default value is the encoding of the page on which the function is called. See cfcontent. For a binary object, this parameter is ignored.

Usage

Adobe recommends that you use the BinaryEncode function to convert binary data to Base64-encoded data in all new applications. 

<h3>ToBase64 Example</h3>
<!--- Initialize data. ---->
<cfset charData = "">
<!--- Create string of ASCII characters (32-255); concatenate them --->
<cfloop index = "data" from = "32" to = "255">
    <cfset ch = chr(data)>
    <cfset charData = charData & ch>
</cfloop>
<p>
The following string is the concatenation of all characters (32 to 255) 
    from the ASCII table.<br>
<cfoutput>#charData#</cfoutput>
</p>
<!--- Create a Base64 representation of this string. ---->
<cfset data64 = toBase64(charData)>

<!----- Convert string to binary. ------->
<cfset binaryData = toBinary(data64)>
<!--- Convert binary back to Base64. ---->
<cfset another64 = toBase64(binaryData)>
<!---- Compare another64 with data64 to ensure that they are equal. ---->
<cfif another64 eq data64>
    <h3>Base64 representations are identical.</h3>
<cfelse>
    <h3>Conversion error.</h3>
</cfif>