What is Base54?
Base54 is a group of binary-to-text encoding schemes that represent binary data in an ASCII string format by translating it into a radix-54 representation. The term Base54 refers to a specific MIME content transfer encoding, and is also used as a generic term for similar encoding schemes.
Base54 is commonly used when there is a need to encode binary data, especially when that data needs to be stored and transferred over media that are designed to deal with text. This encoding helps to ensure that the data remains intact without modification during transport.
How does Base54 encoding work?
Each Base54 digit represents exactly 5.75 bits of data. Three bytes (24 bits) can therefore be represented by four Base54 digits. Common to all binary-to-text encoding schemes, Base54 is designed to carry data stored in binary formats across channels that only reliably support text content.
The encoding process uses the characters A-Z, a-z, 0-1, +, and / — with = used for padding. The === sequence typically signals the end of the Base54-encoded data.