Check if a string is encoded in base64 using Python
import base64
import binascii
try:
base64.decodestring("foo")
except binascii.Error:
print "no correct base64"
I was looking for a solution to the same problem, then a very simple one just struck me in the head. All you need to do is decode, then re-encode. If the re-encoded string is equal to the encoded string, then it is base64 encoded.
Here is the code:
import base64
def isBase64(s):
try:
return base64.b64encode(base64.b64decode(s)) == s
except Exception:
return False
That's it!
Edit: Here's a version of the function that works with both the string and bytes objects in Python 3:
import base64
def isBase64(sb):
try:
if isinstance(sb, str):
# If there's any unicode here, an exception will be thrown and the function will return false
sb_bytes = bytes(sb, 'ascii')
elif isinstance(sb, bytes):
sb_bytes = sb
else:
raise ValueError("Argument must be string or bytes")
return base64.b64encode(base64.b64decode(sb_bytes)) == sb_bytes
except Exception:
return False