Encoding error when converting Hex to Base64 Python

Question

I am currently beginning python, and writing a program that will convert a given long string of hex numbers, that should be separated into pairs. I am having a hard time utilizing pythons encoding function.

So far, I have:

import base64

def splitByTwo(str):
    return [i+j for i,j in zip(list(str)[::2], list(str)[1::2])]

def bytesToBase64(str):
    b64List = []
    stringsByTwo = splitByTwo(str.upper())
    for x in stringsByTwo:
        b64List.insert(stringsByTwo.index(x), base64.b16decode(x))
    return b64List

print(bytesToBase64("49276d206b696c6c696e6720796f757220627261696e206c696b65206120706f69736f6e6f7573206d757368726f6f6d"))

I can get it to print [b'I', b"'", b'm', b'm', b'm', b' ', b' ',.....] but I am not sure what is wrong with my encode/decode to base64 section of the bytesToBase64() method.

univerio · Accepted Answer · 2016-03-30 02:22:30Z

2

Your bytesToBase64 function returns a list of bytes represented by the given hex string (garbled a little bit because you used insert instead of append). You haven't done the base64 encoding part.

To fix your existing function:

def bytesToBase64(str):
    b64List = []
    stringsByTwo = splitByTwo(str.upper())
    for x in stringsByTwo:
        b64List.append(base64.b16decode(x))
    print base64.b64encode("".join(b64List))

But this function is not very idiomatic. To completely rewrite it:

def bytesToBase64(s):
    return base64.b64encode(binascii.unhexlify(s))

answered Mar 30, 2016 at 2:22

univerio

20.7k3 gold badges73 silver badges73 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

1 Comment

Jeremy Over a year ago

Thank you for the solution. I was having a hard time understanding the functionality of the base64 part, as in how it uses and what it uses as arguments. The documentation was a little hard to understand, but now I get it.

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

Encoding error when converting Hex to Base64 Python

1 Answer 1

1 Comment

Your Answer

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

1 Answer 1

1 Comment

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Related