Python converting from base64 to binary

To decode base64 format you need to pass a bytes object to the base64.decodebytes function:

import base64t = "AAADccB6OAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA8WIEAAAAAAACxAAAAHgAACAAADAzBmAQwzoMABgCI AiTSSACCCAAhIAAAiAEMTMgMJibMsZuGeijn4BnI+YeQ0OMOKAACAgAKAABQAAQEABQAAAAAAAAA AA==".encode("ascii")decoded = base64.decodebytes(t)print(decoded)print(len(decoded)*8)

I get the following:

b'\x00\x00\x03q\xc0z8\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00<X\x81\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\xb1\x00\x00\x00\x1e\x00\x00\x08\x00\x00\x0c\x0c\xc1\x98\x040\xce\x83\x00\x06\x00\x88\x02$\xd2H\x00\x82\x08\x00! \x00\x00\x88\x01\x0cL\xc8\x0c&&\xcc\xb1\x9b\x86z(\xe7\xe0\x19\xc8\xf9\x87\x90\xd0\xe3\x0e(\x00\x02\x02\x00\n\x00\x00P\x00\x04\x04\x00\x14\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00'920

So 920 bits as expected.

To get data as binary just iterate on the bytes and convert to binary using format and zero-padding to 8 digits (bin adds a 0b header so it's not suitable), and join the strings together:

print("".join(["{:08b}".format(x) for x in decoded]))

results in:

00000000000000000000001101110001110000000111101000111000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000011110001011000100000010000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001011000100000000000000000000000000011110000000000000000000001000000000000000000000001100000011001100000110011000000001000011000011001110100000110000000000000110000000001000100000000010001001001101001001001000000000001000001000001000000000000010000100100000000000000000000010001000000000010000110001001100110010000000110000100110001001101100110010110001100110111000011001111010001010001110011111100000000110011100100011111001100001111001000011010000111000110000111000101000000000000000001000000010000000000000101000000000000000000101000000000000000001000000010000000000000101000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

(which is 920 chars, as expected)

the easiest way with python 3 is:

import base64    base64.b64decode(base64_to_binary_input)