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Encoding & Conversion Tools

Base64, URL, HTML, Unicode, hex, binary and URL parsing.

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About Encoding & Conversion Tools

Encoding converts data between representations so it can travel through systems that do not handle the raw bytes. The most common is Base64, used to embed binary in text - an image inside a data URI, an attachment in an email, a token on the wire. This category covers Base64, URL, HTML, Unicode, hex and binary encodings plus a URL parser.

The first fact to internalize: encoding is not encryption. A Base64 string is plain text with a different alphabet; anyone can decode it. The same applies to percent-encoding and hex. These tools are for transport and storage, never for secrecy. The Security category covers the actual hashing and token tools.

Base64 has three flavors worth knowing: standard, which uses + and /, URL-safe, which swaps them for - and _, and base64url without padding, which many web tokens use. The tool handles both directions, so you can take a token with - and _ and see exactly which bytes sit underneath.

URL encoding and the URL parser handle the parts of a web address. Percent-encoding turns characters that have a meaning in a URL - a space, a &, a ? - into their %xx form so they survive as data. The parser does the reverse job for analysis: it splits a URL into scheme, host, port, path and query so you can see how a request is actually structured.

HTML encoding escapes the characters that browsers interpret as markup - <, >, &, quotes - into entities, which is how you show code or user input on a page without it executing. Unicode conversion moves between code points, UTF-8 bytes and escape sequences like \u0041, which is useful when a string that was fine in one system ends up garbled in another.

Hex and binary complete the set for byte-level work: hex for the compact two-characters-per-byte form used in hashes, colors and debug output, binary for the full bit view. As with the rest of the category, conversion is instant and local. Pick the encoding by what you are carrying - text in a URL, binary in text, or markup in a document - not by guessing.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Base64 the same as encryption?

No. Base64 is an encoding: it changes the alphabet, not the content. Anyone can decode it. Use it for transport, never for secrecy.

What is the URL-safe Base64 variant?

Standard Base64 uses + and /, which have meaning inside URLs. The URL-safe variant uses - and _ instead, and some tokens omit the = padding entirely.

Why does my text show as mojibake?

Almost always a character-encoding mismatch: bytes were decoded with the wrong codec. The Unicode converter shows the code points and UTF-8 bytes so you can identify exactly which mismatch occurred.