github.com/rstandt/terraform@v0.12.32-0.20230710220336-b1063613405c/website/docs/configuration/functions/base64encode.html.md (about) 1 --- 2 layout: "functions" 3 page_title: "base64encode - Functions - Configuration Language" 4 sidebar_current: "docs-funcs-encoding-base64encode" 5 description: |- 6 The base64encode function applies Base64 encoding to a string. 7 --- 8 9 # `base64encode` Function 10 11 -> **Note:** This page is about Terraform 0.12 and later. For Terraform 0.11 and 12 earlier, see 13 [0.11 Configuration Language: Interpolation Syntax](../../configuration-0-11/interpolation.html). 14 15 `base64encode` applies Base64 encoding to a string. 16 17 Terraform uses the "standard" Base64 alphabet as defined in 18 [RFC 4648 section 4](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4648#section-4). 19 20 Strings in the Terraform language are sequences of unicode characters rather 21 than bytes, so this function will first encode the characters from the string 22 as UTF-8, and then apply Base64 encoding to the result. 23 24 The Terraform language applies Unicode normalization to all strings, and so 25 passing a string through `base64decode` and then `base64encode` may not yield 26 the original result exactly. 27 28 While we do not recommend manipulating large, raw binary data in the Terraform 29 language, Base64 encoding is the standard way to represent arbitrary byte 30 sequences, and so resource types that accept or return binary data will use 31 Base64 themselves, and so this function exists primarily to allow string 32 data to be easily provided to resource types that expect Base64 bytes. 33 34 ## Examples 35 36 ``` 37 > base64encode("Hello World") 38 SGVsbG8gV29ybGQ= 39 ``` 40 41 ## Related Functions 42 43 * [`base64decode`](./base64decode.html) performs the opposite operation, 44 decoding Base64 data and interpreting it as a UTF-8 string. 45 * [`base64gzip`](./base64gzip.html) applies gzip compression to a string 46 and returns the result with Base64 encoding all in one operation. 47 * [`filebase64`](./filebase64.html) reads a file from the local filesystem 48 and returns its raw bytes with Base64 encoding, without creating an 49 intermediate Unicode string.