A terse, human-readable, URL-safe encoding for JSONish strings.
[](https://github.com/more-please/utf64/actions/workflows/js.yml)
[](https://github.com/more-please/utf64/actions/workflows/py.yml)
[](https://github.com/more-please/utf64/actions/workflows/go.yml)
[](https://github.com/more-please/utf64/actions/workflows/rust.yml)
## Overview
Use this when you need to encode a string to make it URL-safe, but you also want to keep it as small and readable as possible (unlike base64). For example:
| Hello | SGVsbG8= | YHello |
| "Hello!" | IkhlbGxvISI= | AYHelloGA |
| {"Hello":"world"} | eyJIZWxsbyI6IndvcmxkIn0= | MAYHelloAFAworldAN |
I made this because I wanted to build a web API with a nice JSON schema that could also be cached by a CDN. To make it cacheable, I had to use the GET method; but GET can't (portably) have a request body, so this means all the API parameters need to be packed into the URL. UTF-64 is a fire-and-forget way to solve this problem.
UTF-64 uses the very permissive [0BSD licence](LICENSE) so you can freely use this code & spec anywhere. I picked 0BSD as it seems to be the "public domain equivalent" most widely accepted by corporations, e.g. Google has a [specific exception permitting the use of 0BSD](https://opensource.google/documentation/reference/patching#forbidden).
## Installation & usage
### JavaScript
```
npm install utf64
```
```
import * as utf64 from "utf64";
console.log(utf64.encode("Hello!"));
console.log(utf64.decode("YHelloG"));
```
### Python
```
pip install utf64
```
```
import utf64
print(utf64.encode("Hello!"))
print(utf64.decode("YHelloG"))
```
### Go
```
go get utf64.moreplease.com
```
```
package main
import (
"fmt"
"utf64.moreplease.com"
)
func main() {
fmt.Println(utf64.Encode("Hello!"))
result, err := utf64.Decode("YHelloG")
if err != nil {
panic(err)
}
fmt.Println(result)
}
```
### Rust
Kindly contributed by @mjmusante
```
cargo add utf64
```
```
use utf64::*;
fn main() {
println!("{}", "Hello!".encode_utf64().unwrap());
match "YHelloG".decode_utf64() {
Ok(result) => println!("{result}"),
Err(e) => panic!("{e}"),
}
}
```
### Command-line tool
The JS package includes a `utf64` command-line tool:
```
npm install -g utf64
```
```
utf64 "Hello\!"
utf64 -d YHelloG
```
## Specification
Output is encoded using base64url-compatible characters: `_ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789-`
| `_` | As-is |
| `a` to `z` | As-is |
| `0` to `9` | As-is |
| `ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTU` | Mapped to: `"',.;:!?()[]{}#=+-*/\` |
| `V` | Newline |
| `W` | Space |
| `X` | Prefix for Unicode 0-63. For example, "`Xk`" is "`%`" (U+0025) |
| `Y` | Prefix for Unicode 64-127. For example, "`Y_`" is "`@`" (U+0040) |
| `Z` | Prefix for Unicode 128+. The following characters are interpreted as UTF-8, reduced to 6-bit bytes by stripping the redundant top two bits. For example, "`ZhBr`" is "`€`" (UTF-8 `[11]100010 [10]000010 [10]101100`) |
See [`test.json`](test.json) for tests that (hopefully) cover all the edge cases, for both valid and invalid encodings.