Using Javascript's atob to decode base64 doesn't properly decode utf-8 strings

Question

I'm using the Javascript window.atob() function to decode a base64-encoded string (specifically the base64-encoded content from the GitHub API). Problem is I'm getting ASCII-encoded characters back (like â¢ instead of ™). How can I properly handle the incoming base64-encoded stream so that it's decoded as utf-8?

Answer 1

The Unicode Problem

Though JavaScript (ECMAScript) has matured, the fragility of Base64, ASCII, and Unicode encoding has caused a lot of headaches (much of it is in this question's history).

Consider the following example:

const ok = "a";
console.log(ok.codePointAt(0).toString(16)); //   61: occupies < 1 byte

const notOK = "✓"
console.log(notOK.codePointAt(0).toString(16)); // 2713: occupies > 1 byte

console.log(btoa(ok));    // YQ==
console.log(btoa(notOK)); // error

Why do we encounter this?

Base64, by design, expects binary data as its input. In terms of JavaScript strings, this means strings in which each character occupies only one byte. So if you pass a string into btoa() containing characters that occupy more than one byte, you will get an error, because this is not considered binary data.

Source: MDN (2021)

The original MDN article also covered the broken nature of window.btoa and .atob, which have since been mended in modern ECMAScript. The original, now-dead MDN article explained:

The "Unicode Problem" Since DOMStrings are 16-bit-encoded strings, in most browsers calling window.btoa on a UTF-8 string will cause a Character Out Of Range exception if a character exceeds the range of a 8-bit byte (0x00~0xFF).

---

Solution with binary interoperability

(Keep scrolling for the ASCII base64 solution)

Source: MDN (2021)

The solution recommended by MDN is to actually encode to and from a binary string representation:

Encoding UTF-8 ⇢ binary

// convert a UTF-8 string to a string in which
// each 16-bit unit occupies only one byte
function toBinary(string) {
  const codeUnits = new Uint16Array(string.length);
  for (let i = 0; i < codeUnits.length; i++) {
    codeUnits[i] = string.charCodeAt(i);
  }
  return btoa(String.fromCharCode(...new Uint8Array(codeUnits.buffer)));
}

// a string that contains characters occupying > 1 byte
let encoded = toBinary("✓ à la mode") // "EycgAOAAIABsAGEAIABtAG8AZABlAA=="

Decoding binary ⇢ UTF-8

function fromBinary(encoded) {
  const binary = atob(encoded);
  const bytes = new Uint8Array(binary.length);
  for (let i = 0; i < bytes.length; i++) {
    bytes[i] = binary.charCodeAt(i);
  }
  return String.fromCharCode(...new Uint16Array(bytes.buffer));
}

// our previous Base64-encoded string
let decoded = fromBinary(encoded) // "✓ à la mode"

Where this fails a little, is that you'll notice the encoded string EycgAOAAIABsAGEAIABtAG8AZABlAA== no longer matches the previous solution's string 4pyTIMOgIGxhIG1vZGU=. This is because it is a binary-encoded native JavaScript string, not a UTF8-encoded string. If this doesn't matter to you (i.e., you aren't converting strings represented in Unicode from another system or are fine with JavaScript's native UTF-16LE encoding), then you're good to go. If, however, you want to preserve the UTF-8 functionality, you're better off using the solution described below.

---

Solution with ASCII base64 interoperability

The entire history of this question shows just how many different ways we've had to work around broken encoding systems over the years. Though the original MDN article no longer exists, this solution is still arguably a better one, and does a great job of solving "The Unicode Problem" while maintaining plain text base64 strings that you can decode on, say, base64decode.org.

There are two possible methods to solve this problem:

• the first one is to escape the whole string (see encodeURIComponent) and then encode it;
• the second one is to convert the UTF-16 DOMString to an unsigned 8-bit integer array (Uint8Array) of characters and then encode it.

A note on previous solutions: the MDN article originally suggested using unescape and escape to solve the Character Out Of Range exception problem, but they have since been deprecated. Some other answers here have suggested working around this with decodeURIComponent and encodeURIComponent, this has proven to be unreliable and unpredictable. The most recent update to this answer uses modern JavaScript functions to improve speed and modernize code.

If you're trying to save yourself some time, you could also consider using a library:

• js-base64 (NPM, great for Node.js)
• base64-js

Encoding UTF-8 ⇢ base64

function b64EncodeUnicode(str) {
    // first we use encodeURIComponent to get percent-encoded Unicode,
    // then we convert the percent encodings into raw bytes which
    // can be fed into btoa.
    return btoa(encodeURIComponent(str).replace(/%([0-9A-F]{2})/g,
        function toSolidBytes(match, p1) {
            return String.fromCharCode('0x' + p1);
    }));
}

b64EncodeUnicode('✓ à la mode'); // "4pyTIMOgIGxhIG1vZGU="
b64EncodeUnicode('\n'); // "Cg=="

Decoding base64 ⇢ UTF-8

function b64DecodeUnicode(str) {
    // Going backwards: from bytestream, to percent-encoding, to original string.
    return decodeURIComponent(atob(str).split('').map(function(c) {
        return '%' + ('00' + c.charCodeAt(0).toString(16)).slice(-2);
    }).join(''));
}

b64DecodeUnicode('4pyTIMOgIGxhIG1vZGU='); // "✓ à la mode"
b64DecodeUnicode('Cg=='); // "\n"

(Why do we need to do this? ('00' + c.charCodeAt(0).toString(16)).slice(-2) prepends a 0 to single character strings, for example, when c == \n, the c.charCodeAt(0).toString(16) returns a, forcing a to be represented as 0a).

---

TypeScript support

Here's the same solution with some additional TypeScript compatibility (via @MA-Maddin):

// Encoding UTF-8 ⇢ base64

function b64EncodeUnicode(str) {
    return btoa(encodeURIComponent(str).replace(/%([0-9A-F]{2})/g, function(match, p1) {
        return String.fromCharCode(parseInt(p1, 16))
    }))
}

// Decoding base64 ⇢ UTF-8

function b64DecodeUnicode(str) {
    return decodeURIComponent(Array.prototype.map.call(atob(str), function(c) {
        return '%' + ('00' + c.charCodeAt(0).toString(16)).slice(-2)
    }).join(''))
}

---

The first solution (deprecated)

This used escape and unescape (which are now deprecated, though this still works in all modern browsers):

function utf8_to_b64( str ) {
    return window.btoa(unescape(encodeURIComponent( str )));
}

function b64_to_utf8( str ) {
    return decodeURIComponent(escape(window.atob( str )));
}

// Usage:
utf8_to_b64('✓ à la mode'); // "4pyTIMOgIGxhIG1vZGU="
b64_to_utf8('4pyTIMOgIGxhIG1vZGU='); // "✓ à la mode"

---

And one last thing: I first encountered this problem when calling the GitHub API. To get this to work on (Mobile) Safari properly, I actually had to strip all white space from the base64 source before I could even decode the source. Whether or not this is still relevant in 2021, I don't know:

function b64_to_utf8( str ) {
    str = str.replace(/\s/g, '');    
    return decodeURIComponent(escape(window.atob( str )));
}

Answer 2

Things change. The escape/unescape methods have been deprecated.

You can URI encode the string before you Base64-encode it. Note that this does't produce Base64-encoded UTF8, but rather Base64-encoded URL-encoded data. Both sides must agree on the same encoding.

See working example here: http://codepen.io/anon/pen/PZgbPW

// encode string
var base64 = window.btoa(encodeURIComponent('€ 你好 æøåÆØÅ'));
// decode string
var str = decodeURIComponent(window.atob(tmp));
// str is now === '€ 你好 æøåÆØÅ'

For OP's problem a third party library such as js-base64 should solve the problem.

Answer 3

Decoding base64 to UTF8 String

Below is current most voted answer by @brandonscript

function b64DecodeUnicode(str) {
    // Going backwards: from bytestream, to percent-encoding, to original string.
    return decodeURIComponent(atob(str).split('').map(function(c) {
        return '%' + ('00' + c.charCodeAt(0).toString(16)).slice(-2);
    }).join(''));
}

Above code can work, but it's very slow. If your input is a very large base64 string, for example 30,000 chars for a base64 html document. It will need lots of computation.

Here is my answer, use built-in TextDecoder, nearly 10x faster than above code for large input.

function decodeBase64(base64) {
    const text = atob(base64);
    const length = text.length;
    const bytes = new Uint8Array(length);
    for (let i = 0; i < length; i++) {
        bytes[i] = text.charCodeAt(i);
    }
    const decoder = new TextDecoder(); // default is utf-8
    return decoder.decode(bytes);
}

Answer 4

The complete article that works for me: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Base64_encoding_and_decoding

The part where we encode from Unicode/UTF-8 is

function utf8_to_b64( str ) {
   return window.btoa(unescape(encodeURIComponent( str )));
}

function b64_to_utf8( str ) {
   return decodeURIComponent(escape(window.atob( str )));
}

// Usage:
utf8_to_b64('✓ à la mode'); // "4pyTIMOgIGxhIG1vZGU="
b64_to_utf8('4pyTIMOgIGxhIG1vZGU='); // "✓ à la mode"

This is one of the most used methods nowadays.

Answer 5

If treating strings as bytes is more your thing, you can use the following functions

function u_atob(ascii) {
    return Uint8Array.from(atob(ascii), c => c.charCodeAt(0));
}

function u_btoa(buffer) {
    var binary = [];
    var bytes = new Uint8Array(buffer);
    for (var i = 0, il = bytes.byteLength; i < il; i++) {
        binary.push(String.fromCharCode(bytes[i]));
    }
    return btoa(binary.join(''));
}


// example, it works also with astral plane characters such as ''
var encodedString = new TextEncoder().encode('✓');
var base64String = u_btoa(encodedString);
console.log('✓' === new TextDecoder().decode(u_atob(base64String)))

Answer 6

Here is 2018 updated solution as described in the Mozilla Development Resources

TO ENCODE FROM UNICODE TO B64

function b64EncodeUnicode(str) {
    // first we use encodeURIComponent to get percent-encoded UTF-8,
    // then we convert the percent encodings into raw bytes which
    // can be fed into btoa.
    return btoa(encodeURIComponent(str).replace(/%([0-9A-F]{2})/g,
        function toSolidBytes(match, p1) {
            return String.fromCharCode('0x' + p1);
    }));
}

b64EncodeUnicode('✓ à la mode'); // "4pyTIMOgIGxhIG1vZGU="
b64EncodeUnicode('\n'); // "Cg=="

TO DECODE FROM B64 TO UNICODE

function b64DecodeUnicode(str) {
    // Going backwards: from bytestream, to percent-encoding, to original string.
    return decodeURIComponent(atob(str).split('').map(function(c) {
        return '%' + ('00' + c.charCodeAt(0).toString(16)).slice(-2);
    }).join(''));
}

b64DecodeUnicode('4pyTIMOgIGxhIG1vZGU='); // "✓ à la mode"
b64DecodeUnicode('Cg=='); // "\n"

Answer 7

I would assume that one might want a solution that produces a widely useable base64 URI. Please visit data:text/plain;charset=utf-8;base64,4pi44pi54pi64pi74pi84pi+4pi/ to see a demonstration (copy the data uri, open a new tab, paste the data URI into the address bar, then press enter to go to the page). Despite the fact that this URI is base64-encoded, the browser is still able to recognize the high code points and decode them properly. The minified encoder+decoder is 1058 bytes (+Gzip→589 bytes)

!function(e){"use strict";function h(b){var a=b.charCodeAt(0);if(55296<=a&&56319>=a)if(b=b.charCodeAt(1),b===b&&56320<=b&&57343>=b){if(a=1024*(a-55296)+b-56320+65536,65535<a)return d(240|a>>>18,128|a>>>12&63,128|a>>>6&63,128|a&63)}else return d(239,191,189);return 127>=a?inputString:2047>=a?d(192|a>>>6,128|a&63):d(224|a>>>12,128|a>>>6&63,128|a&63)}function k(b){var a=b.charCodeAt(0)<<24,f=l(~a),c=0,e=b.length,g="";if(5>f&&e>=f){a=a<<f>>>24+f;for(c=1;c<f;++c)a=a<<6|b.charCodeAt(c)&63;65535>=a?g+=d(a):1114111>=a?(a-=65536,g+=d((a>>10)+55296,(a&1023)+56320)):c=0}for(;c<e;++c)g+="\ufffd";return g}var m=Math.log,n=Math.LN2,l=Math.clz32||function(b){return 31-m(b>>>0)/n|0},d=String.fromCharCode,p=atob,q=btoa;e.btoaUTF8=function(b,a){return q((a?"\u00ef\u00bb\u00bf":"")+b.replace(/[\x80-\uD7ff\uDC00-\uFFFF]|[\uD800-\uDBFF][\uDC00-\uDFFF]?/g,h))};e.atobUTF8=function(b,a){a||"\u00ef\u00bb\u00bf"!==b.substring(0,3)||(b=b.substring(3));return p(b).replace(/[\xc0-\xff][\x80-\xbf]*/g,k)}}(""+void 0==typeof global?""+void 0==typeof self?this:self:global)

Below is the source code used to generate it.

var fromCharCode = String.fromCharCode;
var btoaUTF8 = (function(btoa, replacer){"use strict";
    return function(inputString, BOMit){
        return btoa((BOMit ? "\xEF\xBB\xBF" : "") + inputString.replace(
            /[\x80-\uD7ff\uDC00-\uFFFF]|[\uD800-\uDBFF][\uDC00-\uDFFF]?/g, replacer
        ));
    }
})(btoa, function(nonAsciiChars){"use strict";
    // make the UTF string into a binary UTF-8 encoded string
    var point = nonAsciiChars.charCodeAt(0);
    if (point >= 0xD800 && point <= 0xDBFF) {
        var nextcode = nonAsciiChars.charCodeAt(1);
        if (nextcode !== nextcode) // NaN because string is 1 code point long
            return fromCharCode(0xef/*11101111*/, 0xbf/*10111111*/, 0xbd/*10111101*/);
        // https://mathiasbynens.be/notes/javascript-encoding#surrogate-formulae
        if (nextcode >= 0xDC00 && nextcode <= 0xDFFF) {
            point = (point - 0xD800) * 0x400 + nextcode - 0xDC00 + 0x10000;
            if (point > 0xffff)
                return fromCharCode(
                    (0x1e/*0b11110*/<<3) | (point>>>18),
                    (0x2/*0b10*/<<6) | ((point>>>12)&0x3f/*0b00111111*/),
                    (0x2/*0b10*/<<6) | ((point>>>6)&0x3f/*0b00111111*/),
                    (0x2/*0b10*/<<6) | (point&0x3f/*0b00111111*/)
                );
        } else return fromCharCode(0xef, 0xbf, 0xbd);
    }
    if (point <= 0x007f) return nonAsciiChars;
    else if (point <= 0x07ff) {
        return fromCharCode((0x6<<5)|(point>>>6), (0x2<<6)|(point&0x3f));
    } else return fromCharCode(
        (0xe/*0b1110*/<<4) | (point>>>12),
        (0x2/*0b10*/<<6) | ((point>>>6)&0x3f/*0b00111111*/),
        (0x2/*0b10*/<<6) | (point&0x3f/*0b00111111*/)
    );
});

Then, to decode the base64 data, either HTTP get the data as a data URI or use the function below.

var clz32 = Math.clz32 || (function(log, LN2){"use strict";
    return function(x) {return 31 - log(x >>> 0) / LN2 | 0};
})(Math.log, Math.LN2);
var fromCharCode = String.fromCharCode;
var atobUTF8 = (function(atob, replacer){"use strict";
    return function(inputString, keepBOM){
        inputString = atob(inputString);
        if (!keepBOM && inputString.substring(0,3) === "\xEF\xBB\xBF")
            inputString = inputString.substring(3); // eradicate UTF-8 BOM
        // 0xc0 => 0b11000000; 0xff => 0b11111111; 0xc0-0xff => 0b11xxxxxx
        // 0x80 => 0b10000000; 0xbf => 0b10111111; 0x80-0xbf => 0b10xxxxxx
        return inputString.replace(/[\xc0-\xff][\x80-\xbf]*/g, replacer);
    }
})(atob, function(encoded){"use strict";
    var codePoint = encoded.charCodeAt(0) << 24;
    var leadingOnes = clz32(~codePoint);
    var endPos = 0, stringLen = encoded.length;
    var result = "";
    if (leadingOnes < 5 && stringLen >= leadingOnes) {
        codePoint = (codePoint<<leadingOnes)>>>(24+leadingOnes);
        for (endPos = 1; endPos < leadingOnes; ++endPos)
            codePoint = (codePoint<<6) | (encoded.charCodeAt(endPos)&0x3f/*0b00111111*/);
        if (codePoint <= 0xFFFF) { // BMP code point
          result += fromCharCode(codePoint);
        } else if (codePoint <= 0x10FFFF) {
          // https://mathiasbynens.be/notes/javascript-encoding#surrogate-formulae
          codePoint -= 0x10000;
          result += fromCharCode(
            (codePoint >> 10) + 0xD800,  // highSurrogate
            (codePoint & 0x3ff) + 0xDC00 // lowSurrogate
          );
        } else endPos = 0; // to fill it in with INVALIDs
    }
    for (; endPos < stringLen; ++endPos) result += "\ufffd"; // replacement character
    return result;
});

The advantage of being more standard is that this encoder and this decoder are more widely applicable because they can be used as a valid URL that displays correctly. Observe.

(function(window){
    "use strict";
    var sourceEle = document.getElementById("source");
    var urlBarEle = document.getElementById("urlBar");
    var mainFrameEle = document.getElementById("mainframe");
    var gotoButton = document.getElementById("gotoButton");
    var parseInt = window.parseInt;
    var fromCodePoint = String.fromCodePoint;
    var parse = JSON.parse;
    
    function unescape(str){
        return str.replace(/\\u[\da-f]{0,4}|\\x[\da-f]{0,2}|\\u{[^}]*}|\\[bfnrtv"'\\]|\\0[0-7]{1,3}|\\\d{1,3}/g, function(match){
          try{
            if (match.startsWith("\\u{"))
              return fromCodePoint(parseInt(match.slice(2,-1),16));
            if (match.startsWith("\\u") || match.startsWith("\\x"))
              return fromCodePoint(parseInt(match.substring(2),16));
            if (match.startsWith("\\0") && match.length > 2)
              return fromCodePoint(parseInt(match.substring(2),8));
            if (/^\\\d/.test(match)) return fromCodePoint(+match.slice(1));
          }catch(e){return "\ufffd".repeat(match.length)}
          return parse('"' + match + '"');
        });
    }
    
    function whenChange(){
      try{ urlBarEle.value = "data:text/plain;charset=UTF-8;base64," + btoaUTF8(unescape(sourceEle.value), true);
      } finally{ gotoURL(); }
    }
    sourceEle.addEventListener("change",whenChange,{passive:1});
    sourceEle.addEventListener("input",whenChange,{passive:1});
    
    // IFrame Setup:
    function gotoURL(){mainFrameEle.src = urlBarEle.value}
    gotoButton.addEventListener("click", gotoURL, {passive: 1});
    function urlChanged(){urlBarEle.value = mainFrameEle.src}
    mainFrameEle.addEventListener("load", urlChanged, {passive: 1});
    urlBarEle.addEventListener("keypress", function(evt){
      if (evt.key === "enter") evt.preventDefault(), urlChanged();
    }, {passive: 1});
    
        
    var fromCharCode = String.fromCharCode;
    var btoaUTF8 = (function(btoa, replacer){
      "use strict";
        return function(inputString, BOMit){
         return btoa((BOMit?"\xEF\xBB\xBF":"") + inputString.replace(
          /[\x80-\uD7ff\uDC00-\uFFFF]|[\uD800-\uDBFF][\uDC00-\uDFFF]?/g, replacer
      ));
     }
    })(btoa, function(nonAsciiChars){
  "use strict";
     // make the UTF string into a binary UTF-8 encoded string
     var point = nonAsciiChars.charCodeAt(0);
     if (point >= 0xD800 && point <= 0xDBFF) {
      var nextcode = nonAsciiChars.charCodeAt(1);
      if (nextcode !== nextcode) { // NaN because string is 1code point long
       return fromCharCode(0xef/*11101111*/, 0xbf/*10111111*/, 0xbd/*10111101*/);
      }
      // https://mathiasbynens.be/notes/javascript-encoding#surrogate-formulae
      if (nextcode >= 0xDC00 && nextcode <= 0xDFFF) {
       point = (point - 0xD800) * 0x400 + nextcode - 0xDC00 + 0x10000;
       if (point > 0xffff) {
        return fromCharCode(
         (0x1e/*0b11110*/<<3) | (point>>>18),
         (0x2/*0b10*/<<6) | ((point>>>12)&0x3f/*0b00111111*/),
         (0x2/*0b10*/<<6) | ((point>>>6)&0x3f/*0b00111111*/),
         (0x2/*0b10*/<<6) | (point&0x3f/*0b00111111*/)
        );
       }
      } else {
       return fromCharCode(0xef, 0xbf, 0xbd);
      }
     }
     if (point <= 0x007f) { return inputString; }
     else if (point <= 0x07ff) {
      return fromCharCode((0x6<<5)|(point>>>6), (0x2<<6)|(point&0x3f/*00111111*/));
     } else {
      return fromCharCode(
       (0xe/*0b1110*/<<4) | (point>>>12),
       (0x2/*0b10*/<<6) | ((point>>>6)&0x3f/*0b00111111*/),
       (0x2/*0b10*/<<6) | (point&0x3f/*0b00111111*/)
      );
     }
    });
    setTimeout(whenChange, 0);
})(window);

img:active{opacity:0.8}

<center>
<textarea id="source" style="width:66.7vw">Hello \u1234 W\186\0256ld!
Enter text into the top box. Then the URL will update automatically.
</textarea><br />
<div style="width:66.7vw;display:inline-block;height:calc(25vw + 1em + 6px);border:2px solid;text-align:left;line-height:1em">
<input id="urlBar" style="width:calc(100% - 1em - 13px)" /><img id="gotoButton" src="data:image/png;base64,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" style="width:calc(1em + 4px);line-height:1em;vertical-align:-40%;cursor:pointer" />
<iframe id="mainframe" style="width:66.7vw;height:25vw" frameBorder="0"></iframe>
</div>
</center>

In addition to being very standardized, the above code snippets are also very fast. Instead of an indirect chain of succession where the data has to be converted several times between various forms (such as in Riccardo Galli's response), the above code snippet is as direct as performantly possible. It uses only one simple fast String.prototype.replace call to process the data when encoding, and only one to decode the data when decoding. Another plus is that (especially for big strings), String.prototype.replace allows the browser to automatically handle the underlying memory management of resizing the string, leading a significant performance boost especially in evergreen browsers like Chrome and Firefox that heavily optimize String.prototype.replace. Finally, the icing on the cake is that for you latin script exclūsīvō users, strings which don't contain any code points above 0x7f are extra fast to process because the string remains unmodified by the replacement algorithm.

I have created a github repository for this solution at https://github.com/anonyco/BestBase64EncoderDecoder/

Answer 8

This is my one-liner solution combining Jackie Hans answer and some code from another question:

const utf8_encoded_text = new TextDecoder().decode(Uint8Array.from(window.atob(base_64_decoded_text).split("").map(x => x.charCodeAt(0))));

Answer 9

If trying to decode a Base64 representation of utf8 encoded data in node, you can use the native Buffer helper

Buffer.from("4pyTIMOgIGxhIG1vZGU=", "base64").toString(); // '✓ à la mode'

The toString method of Buffer defaults to utf8, but you can specify any desired encoding. For example, the reverse operation would look like this

Buffer.from('✓ à la mode', "utf8").toString("base64"); // "4pyTIMOgIGxhIG1vZGU="

Answer 10

2023: There is still no built in support in browsers for encoding and decoding base64 to UTF8.

Unless you are really into reinventing the wheel and testing edge cases, for both browsers and Node use https://github.com/dankogai/js-base64.

Answer 11

The Binary String Concept

A problem with the functions btoa() and atob() is that they both operate on string values but the contents of these strings are different from what strings are normally expected to contain. Strings received by btoa(), for instance, are expected to be formatted as binary strings, which are array-like sequences in which each 16-bit character represents an 8-bit value. Every element in the string is expected to contain a value between 0 - 255, and character values outside that range are considered invalid. Values returned by atob() are formatted the same way. It would make more sense if these functions worked with byte arrays instead, but they both use strings.

Unicode strings in Javascript, by contrast, are stored as a series of UTF-16 code units where each code unit has a value between 0 - 65,535. Passing a Unicode string to btoa() will work correctly if the characters contained in the string all lie in the Latin1 range (0 - 255), but the call will fail otherwise. Its counterpart atob(), on the other hand, will take a Base64 formatted string and return a binary string without any regard to whether the contents represent a Latin1 string, a UTF-8 string, a UTF-16 string, or arbitrary binary data. This is by design.

Applying this to the specific example presented in the question, consider the UTF-8 and UTF-16 representations of the Unicode "Trade Mark Sign" character, ™. That character's UTF-8 representation is 0xE2 0x84 0xA2. The Base64 representation of this sequence is '4oSi'. Feeding '4oSi' to atob() will return a string consisting of three 16-bit values each representing one byte: 0x00E2, 0x0084, and 0x00A2. Interpreted as a binary string these values represent the UTF-8 sequence 0xE2, 0x84, 0xA2 (the original ™ character, as expected). Interpreted as an ordinary UTF-16 string, however, the sequence represents the string 'â\x84¢', which is what you're getting.

Encoding and Decoding Native Strings

Binary Encoding

Before we can convert a Unicode string to Base64 we need to decide on a binary encoding for that string. This can be UTF-8, UTF-16, or any other encoding that's able to represent the original string. We can write some functions to convert from native strings to binary strings for particular encodings:

Native String to UTF-8

function encodeAsUTF8(str) {
    const encoder = new TextEncoder();

    const utf8 = encoder.encode(str);

    var binaryString = '';
    for (let b = 0; b < utf8.length; ++b) {
        binaryString += String.fromCharCode(utf8[b]);
    }

    return binaryString;
}

Native String to UTF-16

function encodeAsUTF16(str) {
    var utf16 = new Uint16Array(str.length);

    for (let p = 0; p < utf16.length; ++p) {
        utf16[p] = str.charCodeAt(p);
    }

    const bytes = new Uint8Array(utf16.buffer);

    var binaryString = '';
    for (let b = 0; b < bytes.length; ++b) {
        binaryString += String.fromCharCode(bytes[b]);
    }

    return binaryString;        
}

Other encodings are possible, but the two above should suffice to illustrate the concept.

Decoding

Converting from a binary encoding to a native string requires knowing the source encoding so the binary values are correctly interpreted. Taking UTF-8 and UTF-16 as examples again, we can write functions to convert from UTF-8 and UTF-16 binary strings to native strings:

UTF-8 to Native String

function decodeUTF8(binary) {
    const bytes = new Uint8Array(binary.length);
    for (let b = 0; b < bytes.length; ++b) {
        bytes[b] = binary.charCodeAt(b);
    }

    const decoder = new TextDecoder('utf-8');

    return decoder.decode(bytes);
}

UTF-16 to Native String

function decodeUTF16(binary) {
    const utf16 = new Uint8Array(binary.length);
    for (let b = 0; b < utf16.length; ++b) {
        utf16[b] = binary.charCodeAt(b);
    }

    const decoder = new TextDecoder('utf-16');

    return decoder.decode(utf16);
}

Native String to Base64

With the various string encoding functions in place we can encode a string as UTF-8 and convert this in turn to Base64 by calling:

base64string = btoa(encodeAsUTF8('™'));

We can also encode a string as UTF-16 and convert this to Base64 by calling:

base64string = btoa(encodeAsUTF16('™'));

Base64 to Native String

To convert a UTF-8 encoded string from Base64 to a native string, call:

decodeUTF8(atob(base64string));

To convert a UTF-16 encoded string from Base64 to a native string, call:

decodeUTF16(atob(base64string));

Answer 12

Here's some future-proof code for browsers that may lack escape/unescape(). Note that IE 9 and older don't support atob/btoa(), so you'd need to use custom base64 functions for them.

// Polyfill for escape/unescape
if( !window.unescape ){
    window.unescape = function( s ){
        return s.replace( /%([0-9A-F]{2})/g, function( m, p ) {
            return String.fromCharCode( '0x' + p );
        } );
    };
}
if( !window.escape ){
    window.escape = function( s ){
        var chr, hex, i = 0, l = s.length, out = '';
        for( ; i < l; i ++ ){
            chr = s.charAt( i );
            if( chr.search( /[A-Za-z0-9\@\*\_\+\-\.\/]/ ) > -1 ){
                out += chr; continue; }
            hex = s.charCodeAt( i ).toString( 16 );
            out += '%' + ( hex.length % 2 != 0 ? '0' : '' ) + hex;
        }
        return out;
    };
}

// Base64 encoding of UTF-8 strings
var utf8ToB64 = function( s ){
    return btoa( unescape( encodeURIComponent( s ) ) );
};
var b64ToUtf8 = function( s ){
    return decodeURIComponent( escape( atob( s ) ) );
};

A more comprehensive example for UTF-8 encoding and decoding can be found here: http://jsfiddle.net/47zwb41o/

Answer 13

Small correction, unescape and escape are deprecated, so:

function utf8_to_b64( str ) {
    return window.btoa(decodeURIComponent(encodeURIComponent(str)));
}

function b64_to_utf8( str ) {
     return decodeURIComponent(encodeURIComponent(window.atob(str)));
}


function b64_to_utf8( str ) {
    str = str.replace(/\s/g, '');    
    return decodeURIComponent(encodeURIComponent(window.atob(str)));
}

Answer 14

including above solution if still facing issue try as below, Considerign the case where escape is not supported for TS.

blob = new Blob(["\ufeff", csv_content]); // this will make symbols to appears in excel 

for csv_content you can try like below.

function b64DecodeUnicode(str: any) {        
        return decodeURIComponent(atob(str).split('').map((c: any) => {
            return '%' + ('00' + c.charCodeAt(0).toString(16)).slice(-2);
        }).join(''));
    }