Here are some brief descriptions of the most commonly used encoding types.
Base64 🔗
Base64 is a binary-to-text encoding scheme that represents binary data in ASCII string format. It uses a set of 64 characters, ensuring data can be transferred safely over mediums that are designed to deal with text. Base64 is commonly used for encoding email attachments, URLs, and binary data for web APIs.
Base32 🔗
Base32 is another binary-to-text encoding method similar to Base64 but uses a smaller set of 32 characters. It is less compact than Base64 but is more resilient to human transcription errors due to the use of uppercase letters and digits. It is often used in QR codes and secret key generation for two-factor authentication.
Hex (Hexadecimal) 🔗
Hexadecimal encoding represents binary data using a base-16 system. Each byte is expressed as two hexadecimal digits (0-9 and A-F), making it readable and easy to convert to binary. It is commonly used in cryptography, file signatures, and to represent binary data in programming.
JWT (JSON Web Token) 🔗
JWT is a compact and self-contained token format used for secure information exchange between parties. It encodes a payload (typically in JSON) with header and signature data, allowing for stateless authentication in web applications. JWTs are often used in OAuth and other API authentication mechanisms.
JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) 🔗
JSON is a lightweight data-interchange format that uses human-readable text to represent structured data as key-value pairs. It is widely used for transmitting data between servers and web applications due to its simplicity and ease of parsing across different programming languages.
BSON (Binary JSON) 🔗
BSON is a binary-encoded serialization format similar to JSON, but optimized for speed and space efficiency. It is used primarily in MongoDB for storing documents. BSON supports additional data types not available in JSON, such as binary data and date-times, which makes it more versatile for database operations.
UTF-8 🔗
UTF-8 (Unicode Transformation Format - 8 bit) is a variable-width character encoding capable of encoding all possible Unicode characters. It is backward-compatible with ASCII and widely used in web pages, email, and file systems to represent text in a compact, efficient format.
UTF-16 🔗
UTF-16 is another Unicode encoding that uses 16-bit code units to represent characters. It is useful for representing large character sets efficiently and is commonly used in environments like Windows, Java, and databases where extensive support for international characters is required.
SHA-256 🔗
SHA-256 (Secure Hash Algorithm 256-bit) is a cryptographic hash function that produces a 256-bit (32-byte) fixed-length hash. It is widely used in digital certificates, SSL/TLS, and blockchain technologies like Bitcoin due to its strong security properties.
SHA-512 🔗
SHA-512 is part of the SHA-2 family of cryptographic hash functions and generates a 512-bit (64-byte) hash. Like SHA-256, it is used in applications requiring high-security levels, such as digital signatures, encryption algorithms, and blockchain applications, but offers stronger security due to its larger output.
MD5 🔗
MD5 (Message Digest Algorithm 5) is a widely-used cryptographic hash function that produces a 128-bit hash value. While once used in digital signatures and file integrity checks, it is now considered insecure due to vulnerabilities to hash collisions and is discouraged in favor of stronger algorithms like SHA-256.
X.509 SSL Certificate 🔗
An X.509 SSL certificate is a digital document used to establish trust and secure communications over networks. It binds a public key with an identity, such as a domain name or organization. These certificates are crucial for enabling HTTPS, ensuring data encryption, and validating the authenticity of a server.
URL or HTML Encoded Text 🔗
URL and HTML encoding are methods used to safely transmit special characters over the web. URL encoding replaces unsafe characters with a "%" followed by two hexadecimal digits, while HTML encoding represents reserved characters (like < and &) as HTML entities to prevent injection attacks and formatting issues.