Base64 encoding and decoding in client-side Javascript

Question

Are there any methods in JavaScript that could be used to encode and decode a string using base64 encoding?

Answer 1

For what it's worth, I got inspired by the other answers and wrote a small utility which calls the platform specific APIs to be used universally from either Node.js or a browser:

/**
 * Encode a string of text as base64
 *
 * @param data The string of text.
 * @returns The base64 encoded string.
 */
function encodeBase64(data: string) {
    if (typeof btoa === "function") {
        return btoa(data);
    } else if (typeof Buffer === "function") {
        return Buffer.from(data, "utf-8").toString("base64");
    } else {
        throw new Error("Failed to determine the platform specific encoder");
    }
}

/**
 * Decode a string of base64 as text
 *
 * @param data The string of base64 encoded text
 * @returns The decoded text.
 */
function decodeBase64(data: string) {
    if (typeof atob === "function") {
        return atob(data);
    } else if (typeof Buffer === "function") {
        return Buffer.from(data, "base64").toString("utf-8");
    } else {
        throw new Error("Failed to determine the platform specific decoder");
    }
}