---
page_title: base64encode function reference
description: The `base64encode` function encodes a string in base64 format.
---

# `base64encode` Function

`base64encode` applies Base64 encoding to a string.

Packer uses the "standard" Base64 alphabet as defined in
[RFC 4648 section 4](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4648#section-4).

Strings in the Packer language are sequences of unicode characters rather
than bytes, so this function will first encode the characters from the string
as UTF-8, and then apply Base64 encoding to the result.

The Packer language applies Unicode normalization to all strings, and so
passing a string through `base64decode` and then `base64encode` may not yield
the original result exactly.

While we do not recommend manipulating large, raw binary data in the Packer
language, Base64 encoding is the standard way to represent arbitrary byte
sequences, and so resource types that accept or return binary data will use
Base64 themselves, and so this function exists primarily to allow string
data to be easily provided to resource types that expect Base64 bytes.

## Examples

```shell-session
> base64encode("Hello World")
SGVsbG8gV29ybGQ=
```

## Related Functions

- [`base64decode`](/packer/docs/templates/hcl_templates/functions/encoding/base64decode) performs the opposite operation,
  decoding Base64 data and interpreting it as a UTF-8 string.
