encoding - Base64 encode with Stream_StringToBinary inserts a newline, breaking the string?

Question

Maybe I'm crazy, but it looks like the famous code to run Base64 in VB inserts a newline character (ascii 10) at the 73rd position, which subsequently makes the encoded string invalid for Basic authentication - or anything else for that matter.

Original code:

Function Stream_StringToBinary(Text)
  Const adTypeText = 2
  Const adTypeBinary = 1

  'Create Stream object
  Dim BinaryStream 'As New Stream
  Set BinaryStream = CreateObject("ADODB.Stream")

  'Specify stream type - we want To save text/string data.
  BinaryStream.Type = adTypeText

  'Specify charset For the source text (unicode) data.
  BinaryStream.CharSet = "us-ascii"

  'Open the stream And write text/string data To the object
  BinaryStream.Open
  BinaryStream.WriteText Text

  'Change stream type To binary
  BinaryStream.Position = 0
  BinaryStream.Type = adTypeBinary

  'Ignore first two bytes - sign of
  BinaryStream.Position = 0

  'Open the stream And get binary data from the object
  Stream_StringToBinary = BinaryStream.Read

  Set BinaryStream = Nothing
End Function


Function Base64Encode(sText)
    Dim oXML, oNode

    Set oXML = CreateObject("Msxml2.DOMDocument.3.0")
    Set oNode = oXML.CreateElement("base64")
    oNode.dataType = "bin.base64"
    oNode.nodeTypedValue =Stream_StringToBinary(sText)
    Base64Encode = oNode.text
    Set oNode = Nothing
    Set oXML = Nothing
End Function

'------------------- and here goes the encoding -----------------------
  strEnc = Base64Encode( "AVERYLONGUSERNAMEHELLOTHE123:AVERYLONGPASSWORDWHYAREYOUSOLONGREALLYANNOY123")
'----------------------------------------------------------------------    

RESULT:

QVZFUllMT05HVVNFUk5BTUVIRUxMT1RIRTEyMzpBVkVSWUxPTkdQQVNTV09SRFdIWUFSRVlP
VVNPTE9OR1JFQUxMWUFOTk9ZMTIz

Looks like this occurs on very long UID/PWD pairs.

Has anyone encountered this?

Answer 1

This is because of how the Base64 encoding deals with long strings.

^{From RFC 2045 - 6.8 Base64 Content-Transfer-Encoding}
The encoded output stream must be represented in lines of no more than 76 characters each. All line breaks or other characters not found in Table 1 must be ignored by decoding software. In base64 data, characters other than those in Table 1, line breaks, and other white space probably indicate a transmission error, about which a warning message or even a message rejection might be appropriate under some circumstances.

Because it is adding the vbLf (Chr(10)) after the encode should mean you are safe to just remove it using

strEnc = Replace(strEnc, vbLf, "")

Some languages have a "no wrapping" argument that can be passed to stop the Linefeed being added after the 76th character but I don't know of one in the Microsoft XMLDOM implementation, noted here Base64 -- do we really want/need line breaks every 76 characters? it looks as though it was suggested but there is no evidence it was ever implemented.