basey

JavaScript implementation of RFC 4648.

Introduction

Basey (pronounced base-see) is a JavaScript module that implements the Base16, Base32, Base32hex, Base64 and Base64url encoding schemes described in RFC 4648. The APIs are designed to be developer-friendly with sensible defaults.

Prerequisites

• The file basey.js has zero external dependencies.

Getting Started

Base32 is primarily used to encode binary data. One example of its usage is in Google Authenticator, where the shared secret key is stored using Base32 encoding. The Node.js snippet to do that is shown below.

const { base32 } = require('./basey')
const secret = Uint8Array.from([0, 1, 2, 255, 254, 253]) // Uint8Array(6) [0, 1, 2, 255, 254, 253]
const base32str = base32.encode(secret) // AAAQF7767U
const decoded = base32.decode(base32str) // Uint8Array(6) [0, 1, 2, 255, 254, 253]

Base32 can also be used to encode UTF-8 strings. By default, the decode function returns a Uint8Array. If you want a string, pass a truthy value to the toStr option.

const { base32 } = require('./basey')
const message = '😘ありがとう😪' // arigatō, “thank you”
const base32str = base32.encode(message) // 6CPZRGHDQGBOHAUK4OAYZY4BVDRYDBXQT6MKU
const decoded = base32.decode(base32str, { toStr: true }) // 😘ありがとう😪

Any of the base16, base32, base32hex, base64 and base64url objects can be imported into your own program or script.

const { base32hex } = require('./basey')
const { base32, base64 } = require('./basey')
const { base16, base32, base32hex, base64, base64url } = require('./basey')

Additional Notes

• While RFC 4648 specifies that the encode functions should return "=" padding characters, these padding characters are commonly removed in real-world applications. Therefore, by default, the encode functions in this library do not include the padding characters. If you want them, pass a truthy value to the includePadding option.
• The file basey.js is heavily documented with code comments as well as JSDoc comments. You should be able to understand the code quite easily.
• Type npm test on the command line to run the test vectors from RFC 4648, and more.

Authors

• Steve Leong - Initial work

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.