Based on the answers by Andrew Fox and Cebe, I turned it around and made them string extensions instead of Base64String extensions.
public static class StringExtensions
{
public static string ToBase64(this string text)
{
return ToBase64(text, Encoding.UTF8);
}
public static string ToBase64(this string text, Encoding encoding)
{
if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(text))
{
return text;
}
byte[] textAsBytes = encoding.GetBytes(text);
return Convert.ToBase64String(textAsBytes);
}
public static bool TryParseBase64(this string text, out string decodedText)
{
return TryParseBase64(text, Encoding.UTF8, out decodedText);
}
public static bool TryParseBase64(this string text, Encoding encoding, out string decodedText)
{
if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(text))
{
decodedText = text;
return false;
}
try
{
byte[] textAsBytes = Convert.FromBase64String(text);
decodedText = encoding.GetString(textAsBytes);
return true;
}
catch (Exception)
{
decodedText = null;
return false;
}
}
}