[android] How can I convert an image into a Base64 string?

What is the code to transform an image (maximum of 200 KB) into a Base64 String?

I need to know how to do it with Android, because I have to add the functionality to upload images to a remote server in my main app, putting them into a row of the database, as a string.

I am searching in Google and in Stack Overflow, but I could not find easy examples that I can afford and also I find some examples, but they are not talking about to transform into a String. Then I need to transform into a string to upload by JSON to my remote server.

Here is code for image encoding and image decoding.

In an XML file

<TextView
    android:layout_width="wrap_content"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:text="yyuyuyuuyuyuyu"
    android:id="@+id/tv5"
/>

In a Java file:

TextView textView5;
Bitmap bitmap;

textView5 = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.tv5);

bitmap = BitmapFactory.decodeResource(getResources(), R.drawable.logo);

new AsyncTask<Void, Void, String>() {
    @Override
    protected String doInBackground(Void... voids) {
        ByteArrayOutputStream stream = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
        bitmap.compress(Bitmap.CompressFormat.JPEG, 70, stream);
        byte[] byteFormat = stream.toByteArray();

        // Get the Base64 string
        String imgString = Base64.encodeToString(byteFormat, Base64.NO_WRAP);

        return imgString;
    }

    @Override
    protected void onPostExecute(String s) {
       textView5.setText(s);
    }
}.execute();

This code runs perfect in my project:

profile_image.buildDrawingCache();
Bitmap bmap = profile_image.getDrawingCache();
String encodedImageData = getEncoded64ImageStringFromBitmap(bmap);


public String getEncoded64ImageStringFromBitmap(Bitmap bitmap) {
    ByteArrayOutputStream stream = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
    bitmap.compress(CompressFormat.JPEG, 70, stream);
    byte[] byteFormat = stream.toByteArray();

    // Get the Base64 string
    String imgString = Base64.encodeToString(byteFormat, Base64.NO_WRAP);

    return imgString;
}

For those looking for an efficient method to convert an image file to a Base64 string without compression or converting the file to a bitmap first, you can instead encode the file as base64

val base64EncodedImage = FileInputStream(imageItem.localSrc).use {inputStream - >
    ByteArrayOutputStream().use {outputStream - >
            Base64OutputStream(outputStream, Base64.DEFAULT).use {
                base64FilterStream - >
                    inputStream.copyTo(base64FilterStream)
                base64FilterStream.flush()
                outputStream.toString()
            }
      }
}

Hope this helps!

Use this code:

byte[] decodedString = Base64.decode(Base64String.getBytes(), Base64.DEFAULT);

Bitmap decodedByte = BitmapFactory.decodeByteArray(decodedString, 0, decodedString.length);

If you're doing this on Android, here's a helper copied from the React Native codebase:

import java.io.ByteArrayOutputStream;
import java.io.Closeable;
import java.io.FileInputStream;
import java.io.FileNotFoundException;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.InputStream;

import android.util.Base64;
import android.util.Base64OutputStream;
import android.util.Log;

// You probably don't want to do this with large files
// (will allocate a large string and can cause an OOM crash).
private String readFileAsBase64String(String path) {
  try {
    InputStream is = new FileInputStream(path);
    ByteArrayOutputStream baos = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
    Base64OutputStream b64os = new Base64OutputStream(baos, Base64.DEFAULT);
    byte[] buffer = new byte[8192];
    int bytesRead;
    try {
      while ((bytesRead = is.read(buffer)) > -1) {
        b64os.write(buffer, 0, bytesRead);
      }
      return baos.toString();
    } catch (IOException e) {
      Log.e(TAG, "Cannot read file " + path, e);
      // Or throw if you prefer
      return "";
    } finally {
      closeQuietly(is);
      closeQuietly(b64os); // This also closes baos
    }
  } catch (FileNotFoundException e) {
    Log.e(TAG, "File not found " + path, e);
    // Or throw if you prefer
    return "";
  }
}

private static void closeQuietly(Closeable closeable) {
  try {
    closeable.close();
  } catch (IOException e) {
  }
}

byte[] decodedString = Base64.decode(result.getBytes(), Base64.DEFAULT);

// Put the image file path into this method
public static String getFileToByte(String filePath){
    Bitmap bmp = null;
    ByteArrayOutputStream bos = null;
    byte[] bt = null;
    String encodeString = null;
    try{
        bmp = BitmapFactory.decodeFile(filePath);
        bos = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
        bmp.compress(Bitmap.CompressFormat.JPEG, 100, bos);
        bt = bos.toByteArray();
        encodeString = Base64.encodeToString(bt, Base64.DEFAULT);
    }
    catch (Exception e){
      e.printStackTrace();
    }
    return encodeString;
}

Convert an image to Base64 string in Android:

ByteArrayOutputStream baos = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
Bitmap bitmap = BitmapFactory.decodeResource(getResources(), R.drawable.yourimage);
bitmap.compress(Bitmap.CompressFormat.JPEG, 100, baos);
byte[] imageBytes = baos.toByteArray();
String imageString = Base64.encodeToString(imageBytes, Base64.DEFAULT);

Here is the encoding and decoding code in Kotlin:

 fun encode(imageUri: Uri): String {
    val input = activity.getContentResolver().openInputStream(imageUri)
    val image = BitmapFactory.decodeStream(input , null, null)

    // Encode image to base64 string
    val baos = ByteArrayOutputStream()
    image.compress(Bitmap.CompressFormat.JPEG, 100, baos)
    var imageBytes = baos.toByteArray()
    val imageString = Base64.encodeToString(imageBytes, Base64.DEFAULT)
    return imageString
}

fun decode(imageString: String) {

    // Decode base64 string to image
    val imageBytes = Base64.decode(imageString, Base64.DEFAULT)
    val decodedImage = BitmapFactory.decodeByteArray(imageBytes, 0, imageBytes.size)

    imageview.setImageBitmap(decodedImage)
}

If you need Base64 over JSON, check out Jackson: it has explicit support for binary data read/write as Base64 at both the low level (JsonParser, JsonGenerator) and data-binding level. So you can just have POJOs with byte[] properties, and encoding/decoding is automatically handled.

And pretty efficiently too, should that matter.

Below is the pseudocode that may help you:

public  String getBase64FromFile(String path)
{
    Bitmap bmp = null;
    ByteArrayOutputStream baos = null;
    byte[] baat = null;
    String encodeString = null;
    try
    {
        bmp = BitmapFactory.decodeFile(path);
        baos = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
        bmp.compress(Bitmap.CompressFormat.JPEG, 100, baos);
        baat = baos.toByteArray();
        encodeString = Base64.encodeToString(baat, Base64.DEFAULT);
    }
    catch (Exception e)
    {
        e.printStackTrace();
    }

   return encodeString;
}

Instead of using Bitmap, you can also do this through a trivial InputStream. Well, I am not sure, but I think it's a bit efficient.

InputStream inputStream = new FileInputStream(fileName); // You can get an inputStream using any I/O API
byte[] bytes;
byte[] buffer = new byte[8192];
int bytesRead;
ByteArrayOutputStream output = new ByteArrayOutputStream();

try {
    while ((bytesRead = inputStream.read(buffer)) != -1) {
        output.write(buffer, 0, bytesRead);
    }
}
catch (IOException e) {
    e.printStackTrace();
}

bytes = output.toByteArray();
String encodedString = Base64.encodeToString(bytes, Base64.DEFAULT);

I make a static function. Its more efficient i think.

public static String file2Base64(String filePath) {
        FileInputStream fis = null;
        String base64String = "";
        ByteArrayOutputStream bos = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
        try {
            fis = new FileInputStream(filePath);
            byte[] buffer = new byte[1024 * 100];
            int count = 0;
            while ((count = fis.read(buffer)) != -1) {
                bos.write(buffer, 0, count);
            }
            fis.close();
        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
        base64String = Base64.encodeToString(bos.toByteArray(), Base64.DEFAULT);
        return base64String;

    }

Simple and easier!