What is base64 encoding used for?

Question

I\'ve heard people talking about \"base 64 encoding\" here and there. What is it used for?

Answer 1

“Base64 encoding schemes are commonly used when there is a need to encode binary data that needs be stored and transferred over media that are designed to deal with textual data. This is to ensure that the data remains intact without modification during transport”(Wiki, 2017)

Example could be the following: you have a web service that accept only ASCII chars. You want to save and then transfer user’s data to some other location (API) but recipient want receive untouched data. Base64 is for that. . . The only downside is that base64 encoding will require around 33% more space than regular strings.

Another Example:: uenc = url encoded = aHR0cDovL2xvYy5tYWdlbnRvLmNvbS9hc2ljcy1tZW4tcy1nZWwta2F5YW5vLXhpaS5odG1s = http://loc.querytip.com/asics-men-s-gel-kayano-xii.html.

As you can see we can’t put char “/” in URL if we want to send last visited URL as parameter because we would break attribute/value rule for “MOD rewrite” – GET parameter.

A full example would be: “http://loc.querytip.com/checkout/cart/add/uenc/http://loc.magento.com/asics-men-s-gel-kayano-xii.html/product/93/”