How to save a PNG image server-side, from a base64 data string

You need to extract the base64 image data from that string, decode it and then you can save it to disk, you don't need GD since it already is a png.

$data = 'data:image/png;base64,AAAFBfj42Pj4';

list($type, $data) = explode(';', $data);
list(, $data)      = explode(',', $data);
$data = base64_decode($data);

file_put_contents('/tmp/image.png', $data);

And as a one-liner:

$data = base64_decode(preg_replace('#^data:image/\w+;base64,#i', '', $data));

An efficient method for extracting, decoding, and checking for errors is:

if (preg_match('/^data:image\/(\w+);base64,/', $data, $type)) {
    $data = substr($data, strpos($data, ',') + 1);
    $type = strtolower($type[1]); // jpg, png, gif

    if (!in_array($type, [ 'jpg', 'jpeg', 'gif', 'png' ])) {
        throw new \Exception('invalid image type');
    }
    $data = str_replace( ' ', '+', $data );
    $data = base64_decode($data);

    if ($data === false) {
        throw new \Exception('base64_decode failed');
    }
} else {
    throw new \Exception('did not match data URI with image data');
}

file_put_contents("img.{$type}", $data);

Try this:

file_put_contents('img.png', base64_decode($base64string));

file_put_contents docs

I had to replace spaces with plus symbols str_replace(' ', '+', $img); to get this working.

Here is the full code

$img = $_POST['img']; // Your data 'data:image/png;base64,AAAFBfj42Pj4';
$img = str_replace('data:image/png;base64,', '', $img);
$img = str_replace(' ', '+', $img);
$data = base64_decode($img);
file_put_contents('/tmp/image.png', $data);

Hope that helps.