github.com/hugorut/terraform@v1.1.3/website/docs/language/functions/base64encode.mdx (about) 1 --- 2 page_title: base64encode - Functions - Configuration Language 3 description: The base64encode function applies Base64 encoding to a string. 4 --- 5 6 # `base64encode` Function 7 8 `base64encode` applies Base64 encoding to a string. 9 10 Terraform uses the "standard" Base64 alphabet as defined in 11 [RFC 4648 section 4](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4648#section-4). 12 13 Strings in the Terraform language are sequences of unicode characters rather 14 than bytes, so this function will first encode the characters from the string 15 as UTF-8, and then apply Base64 encoding to the result. 16 17 The Terraform language applies Unicode normalization to all strings, and so 18 passing a string through `base64decode` and then `base64encode` may not yield 19 the original result exactly. 20 21 While we do not recommend manipulating large, raw binary data in the Terraform 22 language, Base64 encoding is the standard way to represent arbitrary byte 23 sequences, and so resource types that accept or return binary data will use 24 Base64 themselves, and so this function exists primarily to allow string 25 data to be easily provided to resource types that expect Base64 bytes. 26 27 `base64encode` is, in effect, a shorthand for calling 28 [`textencodebase64`](/language/functions/textencodebase64) with the encoding name set to 29 `UTF-8`. 30 31 ## Examples 32 33 ``` 34 > base64encode("Hello World") 35 SGVsbG8gV29ybGQ= 36 ``` 37 38 ## Related Functions 39 40 * [`base64decode`](/language/functions/base64decode) performs the opposite operation, 41 decoding Base64 data and interpreting it as a UTF-8 string. 42 * [`textencodebase64`](/language/functions/textencodebase64) is a more general function that 43 supports character encodings other than UTF-8. 44 * [`base64gzip`](/language/functions/base64gzip) applies gzip compression to a string 45 and returns the result with Base64 encoding all in one operation. 46 * [`filebase64`](/language/functions/filebase64) reads a file from the local filesystem 47 and returns its raw bytes with Base64 encoding, without creating an 48 intermediate Unicode string.