Passing base64 encoded strings in URL

Question 1

Is it safe to pass raw base64 encoded strings via GET parameters?

Question 2

No, you would need to url-encode it, since base64 strings can contain the "+", "=" and "/" characters which could alter the meaning of your data - look like a sub-folder.

Valid base64 characters are below.

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789+/=

Question 3

Something like this should do (does not check for proper length!):

^@[a-zA-Z0-9+/]+={,2}$

The length of any base64 encoded string must be a multiple of 4, hence the additional.

See here for a solution that checks against proper length: RegEx to parse or validate Base64 data

A quick explanation of the regex from the linked answer:

^@ #match "@" at beginning of string
(?:[A-Za-z0-9+/]{4})* #match any number of 4-letter blocks of the base64 char set
(?:
    [A-Za-z0-9+/]{2}== #match 2-letter block of the base64 char set followed by "==", together forming a 4-letter block
| # or
    [A-Za-z0-9+/]{3}= #match 3-letter block of the base64 char set followed by "=", together forming a 4-letter block
)?
$ #match end of string

Question 4

Certain characters in the URL are special, like + which stands for a space. To send arbitrary data via the URL, you need to URL escape it to avoid characters contained in the data being recognized as "special characters". Since you're putting the data into HTML, you also need to HTML-escape it to avoid characters in the URL-encoded data being recognized as special HTML characters. Hence:

$data = /* some data */;
$base64Data = base64_encode($data);
$urlData = urlencode($base64Data);
$htmlData = htmlspecialchars($urlData);
printf('<input type="hidden" value="%s" name="pass-it-on">', $htmlData);

Question 5

AFAIK, You have to use image function imagecreatefromstring, imagejpeg to create the images.

$imageData = base64_decode($imageData);
$source = imagecreatefromstring($imageData);
$rotate = imagerotate($source, $angle, 0); // if want to rotate the image
$imageSave = imagejpeg($rotate,$imageName,100);
imagedestroy($source);

Hope this will help.

PHP CODE WITH IMAGE DATA

$imageDataEncoded = base64_encode(file_get_contents('sample.png'));
$imageData = base64_decode($imageDataEncoded);
$source = imagecreatefromstring($imageData);
$angle = 90;
$rotate = imagerotate($source, $angle, 0); // if want to rotate the image
$imageName = "hello1.png";
$imageSave = imagejpeg($rotate,$imageName,100);
imagedestroy($source);

So Following is the php part of your program .. NOTE the change with comment Change is here

    $uploadedPhotos = array('photo_1','photo_2','photo_3','photo_4');
     foreach ($uploadedPhotos as $file) {
      if($this->input->post($file)){                   
         $imageData = base64_decode($this->input->post($file)); // <-- **Change is here for variable name only**
         $photo = imagecreatefromstring($imageData); // <-- **Change is here**

        /* Set name of the photo for show in the form */
        $this->session->set_userdata('upload_'.$file,'ant');
        /*set time of the upload*/
        if(!$this->session->userdata('uploading_on_datetime')){
         $this->session->set_userdata('uploading_on_datetime',time());
        }
         $datetime_upload = $this->session->userdata('uploading_on_datetime',true);

        /* create temp dir with time and user id */
        $new_dir = 'temp/user_'.$this->session->userdata('user_id',true).'_on_'.$datetime_upload.'/';
        if(!is_dir($new_dir)){
        @mkdir($new_dir);
        }
        /* move uploaded file with new name */
        // @file_put_contents( $new_dir.$file.'.jpg',imagejpeg($photo));
        imagejpeg($photo,$new_dir.$file.'.jpg',100); // <-- **Change is here**

      }
    }

Question 6

Basic method

$query = parse_url($url, PHP_URL_QUERY);

// Returns a string if the URL has parameters or NULL if not
if ($query) {
    $url .= '&category=1';
} else {
    $url .= '?category=1';
}

More advanced

$url = 'http://example.com/search?keyword=test&category=1&tags[]=fun&tags[]=great';

$url_parts = parse_url($url);
// If URL doesn't have a query string.
if (isset($url_parts['query'])) { // Avoid 'Undefined index: query'
    parse_str($url_parts['query'], $params);
} else {
    $params = array();
}

$params['category'] = 2;     // Overwrite if exists
$params['tags'][] = 'cool';  // Allows multiple values

// Note that this will url_encode all values
$url_parts['query'] = http_build_query($params);

// If you have pecl_http
echo http_build_url($url_parts);

// If not
echo $url_parts['scheme'] . '://' . $url_parts['host'] . $url_parts['path'] . '?' . $url_parts['query'];

You should put this in a function at least, if not a class.

Passing base64 encoded strings in URL

Answers

php,url,string,get,base64