Detect base64 encoding in PHP?

Question

Is there some way to detect if a string has been base64_encoded() in PHP?

We\'re converting some storage from plain text to base64 and part of it lives in a cookie

Answer 1

I was about to build a base64 toggle in php, this is what I did:

function base64Toggle($str) {
    if (!preg_match('~[^0-9a-zA-Z+/=]~', $str)) {
        $check = str_split(base64_decode($str));
        $x = 0;
        foreach ($check as $char) if (ord($char) > 126) $x++;
        if ($x/count($check)*100 < 30) return base64_decode($str);
    }
    return base64_encode($str);
}

It works perfectly for me. Here are my complete thoughts on it: http://www.albertmartin.de/blog/code.php/19/base64-detection

And here you can try it: http://www.albertmartin.de/tools