Detecting image type from base64 string in PHP

Question

Is it possible to find out the type of an image encoded as a base64 String in PHP?

I have no method of accessing the original image file, just the encoded string. F

Answer 1

The solution given by @Marc B is the best one for me (if our php version is > 5.3.0 otherwise we can use the solution given by @Aaron Murgatroyd).

I would like to give a little addition to this solution.

To get the image type you can do it like this :

$split = explode( '/', $mime_type );
$type = $split[1]; 

In fact, (if you don't know it) the mime type for images is : image/type and type can be png or gif or jpeg or ...

Hope that can help someone and thanks to @Marc B for his solution.

For an exhaustive list of mime type you can look here :

• http://www.sitepoint.com/web-foundations/mime-types-complete-list/