How to check whether a string is Base64 encoded or not

Question

You can use the following regular expression to check if a string constitutes a valid base64 encoding:

^([A-Za-z0-9+/]{4})*([A-Za-z0-9+/]{3}=|[A-Za-z0-9+/]{2}==)?$

In base64 encoding, the character set is [A-Z, a-z, 0-9, and + /]. If the rest length is less than 4, the string is padded with '=' characters.

^([A-Za-z0-9+/]{4})* means the string starts with 0 or more base64 groups.

([A-Za-z0-9+/]{4}|[A-Za-z0-9+/]{3}=|[A-Za-z0-9+/]{2}==)$ means the string ends in one of three forms: [A-Za-z0-9+/]{4}, [A-Za-z0-9+/]{3}= or [A-Za-z0-9+/]{2}==.

If you are using Java, you can actually use commons-codec library

import org.apache.commons.codec.binary.Base64;

String stringToBeChecked = "...";
boolean isBase64 = Base64.isArrayByteBase64(stringToBeChecked.getBytes());

[UPDATE 1] Deprecation Notice Use instead

Base64.isBase64(value);

   /**
     * Tests a given byte array to see if it contains only valid characters within the Base64 alphabet. Currently the
     * method treats whitespace as valid.
     *
     * @param arrayOctet
     *            byte array to test
     * @return {@code true} if all bytes are valid characters in the Base64 alphabet or if the byte array is empty;
     *         {@code false}, otherwise
     * @deprecated 1.5 Use {@link #isBase64(byte[])}, will be removed in 2.0.
     */
    @Deprecated
    public static boolean isArrayByteBase64(final byte[] arrayOctet) {
        return isBase64(arrayOctet);
    }

Well you can:

• Check that the length is a multiple of 4 characters
• Check that every character is in the set A-Z, a-z, 0-9, +, / except for padding at the end which is 0, 1 or 2 '=' characters

If you're expecting that it will be base64, then you can probably just use whatever library is available on your platform to try to decode it to a byte array, throwing an exception if it's not valid base 64. That depends on your platform, of course.

As of Java 8, you can simply use java.util.Base64 to try and decode the string:

String someString = "...";
Base64.Decoder decoder = Base64.getDecoder();

try {
    decoder.decode(someString);
} catch(IllegalArgumentException iae) {
    // That string wasn't valid.
}

Try like this for PHP5

//where $json is some data that can be base64 encoded
$json=some_data;

//this will check whether data is base64 encoded or not
if (base64_decode($json, true) == true)
{          
   echo "base64 encoded";          
}
else 
{
   echo "not base64 encoded"; 
}

Use this for PHP7

 //$string parameter can be base64 encoded or not

function is_base64_encoded($string){
 //this will check if $string is base64 encoded and return true, if it is.
 if (base64_decode($string, true) !== false){          
   return true;        
 }else{
   return false;
 }
}

var base64Rejex = /^(?:[A-Z0-9+\/]{4})*(?:[A-Z0-9+\/]{2}==|[A-Z0-9+\/]{3}=|[A-Z0-9+\/]{4})$/i;
var isBase64Valid = base64Rejex.test(base64Data); // base64Data is the base64 string

if (isBase64Valid) {
    // true if base64 formate
    console.log('It is base64');
} else {
    // false if not in base64 formate
    console.log('it is not in base64');
}