Node.js throws "btoa is not defined" error

The 'btoa-atob' module does not export a programmatic interface, it only provides command line utilities.

If you need to convert to Base64 you could do so using Buffer:

console.log(Buffer.from('Hello World!').toString('base64'));

Reverse (assuming the content you're decoding is a utf8 string):

console.log(Buffer.from(b64Encoded, 'base64').toString());

Note: prior to Node v4, use new Buffer rather than Buffer.from.

The solutions posted here don't work in non-ascii characters (i.e. if you plan to exchange base64 between Node.js and a browser). In order to make it work you have to mark the input text as 'binary'.

Buffer.from('Hélló wórld!!', 'binary').toString('base64')

This gives you SOlsbPMgd/NybGQhIQ==. If you make atob('SOlsbPMgd/NybGQhIQ==') in a browser it will decode it in the right way. It will do it right also in Node.js via:

Buffer.from('SOlsbPMgd/NybGQhIQ==', 'base64').toString('binary')

If you don't do the "binary part", you will decode wrongly the special chars.

I got it from the implementation of the btoa npm package:

My team ran into this problem when using Node with React Native and PouchDB. Here is how we solved it...

NPM install buffer:

$ npm install --save buffer

Ensure Buffer, btoa, and atob are loaded as a globals:

global.Buffer = global.Buffer || require('buffer').Buffer;

if (typeof btoa === 'undefined') {
  global.btoa = function (str) {
    return new Buffer(str, 'binary').toString('base64');
  };
}

if (typeof atob === 'undefined') {
  global.atob = function (b64Encoded) {
    return new Buffer(b64Encoded, 'base64').toString('binary');
  };
}

I found that although the shims from answers above worked, they did not match the behaviour of desktop browsers' implementations of btoa() and atob():

const btoa = function(str){ return Buffer.from(str).toString('base64'); }
// returns "4pyT", yet in desktop Chrome would throw an error.
btoa('✓');
// returns "fsO1w6bCvA==", yet in desktop Chrome would return "fvXmvA=="
btoa(String.fromCharCode.apply(null, new Uint8Array([0x7e, 0xf5, 0xe6, 0xbc])));

As it turns out, Buffer instances represent/interpret strings encoded in UTF-8 by default. By contrast, in desktop Chrome, you can't even input a string that contains characters outside of the latin1 range into btoa(), as it will throw an exception: Uncaught DOMException: Failed to execute 'btoa' on 'Window': The string to be encoded contains characters outside of the Latin1 range.

Therefore, you need to explicitly set the encoding type to latin1 in order for your Node.js shim to match the encoding type of desktop Chrome:

const btoaLatin1 = function(str) { return Buffer.from(str, 'latin1').toString('base64'); }
const atobLatin1 = function(b64Encoded) {return Buffer.from(b64Encoded, 'base64').toString('latin1');}

const btoaUTF8 = function(str) { return Buffer.from(str, 'utf8').toString('base64'); }
const atobUTF8 = function(b64Encoded) {return Buffer.from(b64Encoded, 'base64').toString('utf8');}

btoaLatin1('✓'); // returns "Ew==" (would be preferable for it to throw error because this is undecodable)
atobLatin1(btoa('✓')); // returns "\u0019" (END OF MEDIUM)

btoaUTF8('✓'); // returns "4pyT"
atobUTF8(btoa('✓')); // returns "✓"

// returns "fvXmvA==", just like desktop Chrome
btoaLatin1(String.fromCharCode.apply(null, new Uint8Array([0x7e, 0xf5, 0xe6, 0xbc])));
// returns "fsO1w6bCvA=="
btoaUTF8(String.fromCharCode.apply(null, new Uint8Array([0x7e, 0xf5, 0xe6, 0xbc])));

Node.js throws "btoa is not defined" error

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