Base64 Encoding: Illegal base64 character 3c

Question

I am trying to decode data in an xml format into bytes base64 and I am having an issues. My method is in java which takes a String data and converts it into bytes like as bellow.

String data = "......"; //string of data in xml format
byte[] dataBytes = Base64.getDecoder().decode(data);

Which failed and gave the exception like bellow.

java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Illegal base64 character 3c
    at java.util.Base64$Decoder.decode0(Base64.java:714)
    at java.util.Base64$Decoder.decode(Base64.java:526)
    at java.util.Base64$Decoder.decode(Base64.java:549)
    at XmlReader.main(XmlReader.java:61)

Is the xml format not compatible with base64?

Answer 1

Just use this method

getMimeDecoder()

String data = "......";
byte[] dataBytes =  Base64.getMimeDecoder().decode(data);