Question

I have been looking how to validate a base64 string and came across this.

 ^(?:[A-Za-z0-9+/]{4})*(?:[A-Za-z0-9+/]{2}==|[A-Za-z0-9+/]{3}=)?$

I need a little help to make it allow “==” aswell as “=”.

Thanks

Answer 1

This should perform extremely well.

private static readonly HashSet<char> _base64Characters = new HashSet<char>() { 
    'A', 'B', 'C', 'D', 'E', 'F', 'G', 'H', 'I', 'J', 'K', 'L', 'M', 'N', 'O', 'P', 
    'Q', 'R', 'S', 'T', 'U', 'V', 'W', 'X', 'Y', 'Z', 'a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e', 'f', 
    'g', 'h', 'i', 'j', 'k', 'l', 'm', 'n', 'o', 'p', 'q', 'r', 's', 't', 'u', 'v', 
    'w', 'x', 'y', 'z', '0', '1', '2', '3', '4', '5', '6', '7', '8', '9', '+', '/', 
    '='
};

public static bool IsBase64String(string value)
{
    if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(value))
    {
        return false;
    }
    else if (value.Any(c => !_base64Characters.Contains(c)))
    {
        return false;
    }

    try
    {
        Convert.FromBase64String(value);
        return true;
    }
    catch (FormatException)
    {
        return false;
    }
}