Latest and greatest way to do this:
Node supports file and buffer operations with the base64
encoding:
const fs = require('fs');
const contents = fs.readFileSync('/path/to/file.jpg', {encoding: 'base64'});
Or using the new promises API:
const fs = require('fs').promises;
const contents = await fs.readFile('/path/to/file.jpg', {encoding: 'base64'});