Remove trailing “=” when base64 encoding

Question

I am noticing that whenever I base64 encode a string, a \"=\" is appended at the end. Can I remove this character and then reliably decode it later by adding it back, or is

Answer 1

For Android You may have trouble if You want to use android.util.base64 class, since that don't let you perform UnitTest others that integration test - those uses Adnroid environment.

In other hand if You will use java.util.base64, compiler warns You that You sdk may to to low (below 26) to use it.

So I suggest Android developers to use

implementation "commons-codec:commons-codec:1.13"

Encoding object

fun encodeObjectToBase64(objectToEncode: Any): String{
    val objectJson = Gson().toJson(objectToEncode).toString()
    return encodeStringToBase64(objectJson.toByteArray(Charsets.UTF_8))
}

fun encodeStringToBase64(byteArray: ByteArray): String{
    return Base64.encodeBase64URLSafeString(byteArray).toString() // encode with no padding
}

Decoding to Object

fun  decodeBase64Object(encodedMessage: String, encodeToClass: Class): T{
    val decodedBytes = Base64.decodeBase64(encodedMessage)
    val messageString = String(decodedBytes, StandardCharsets.UTF_8)
    return Gson().fromJson(messageString, encodeToClass)
}

Of course You may omit Gson parsing and put straight away into method Your String transformed to ByteArray