Python: encode an image in Base64

  • Python
  • Gabriele Romanato

In this article we will see how to encode an image as a Base64 string in Python.

We can implement the following solution:

import base64
import os
import re

def create_b64_image_data(img_path = None):
    if img_path is None:
        return ''
    if not os.path.exists(img_path):
        return ''
    if not re.search(r'\.(jpe?g|png|gif)$', img_path):
        return ''        
    with open(img_path, 'rb') as img:
        data = base64.b64encode(img.read())
        return data.decode()

Before making the conversion we verify that the image exists and is in the desired format. Then we use the b64encode() method to get a byte buffer and finally we return the corresponding Base64 string with the decode() method.

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