How can I save a base64-encoded image to disk?

Question

I think you are converting the data a bit more than you need to. Once you create the buffer with the proper encoding, you just need to write the buffer to the file.

var base64Data = req.rawBody.replace(/^data:image\/png;base64,/, "");

require("fs").writeFile("out.png", base64Data, 'base64', function(err) {
  console.log(err);
});

new Buffer(..., 'base64') will convert the input string to a Buffer, which is just an array of bytes, by interpreting the input as a base64 encoded string. Then you can just write that byte array to the file.

Update

As mentioned in the comments, req.rawBody is no longer a thing. If you are using express/connect then you should use the bodyParser() middleware and use req.body, and if you are doing this using standard Node then you need to aggregate the incoming data event Buffer objects and do this image data parsing in the end callback.

this is my full solution which would read any base64 image format and save it in the proper format in the database:

    // Save base64 image to disk
    try
    {
        // Decoding base-64 image
        // Source: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/20267939/nodejs-write-base64-image-file
        function decodeBase64Image(dataString) 
        {
          var matches = dataString.match(/^data:([A-Za-z-+\/]+);base64,(.+)$/);
          var response = {};

          if (matches.length !== 3) 
          {
            return new Error('Invalid input string');
          }

          response.type = matches[1];
          response.data = new Buffer(matches[2], 'base64');

          return response;
        }

        // Regular expression for image type:
        // This regular image extracts the "jpeg" from "image/jpeg"
        var imageTypeRegularExpression      = /\/(.*?)$/;      

        // Generate random string
        var crypto                          = require('crypto');
        var seed                            = crypto.randomBytes(20);
        var uniqueSHA1String                = crypto
                                               .createHash('sha1')
                                                .update(seed)
                                                 .digest('hex');

        var base64Data = 'data:image/jpeg;base64,/9j/4AAQSkZJRgABAQEAZABkAAD/4Q3zaHR0cDovL25zLmFkb2JlLmN...';

        var imageBuffer                      = decodeBase64Image(base64Data);
        var userUploadedFeedMessagesLocation = '../img/upload/feed/';

        var uniqueRandomImageName            = 'image-' + uniqueSHA1String;
        // This variable is actually an array which has 5 values,
        // The [1] value is the real image extension
        var imageTypeDetected                = imageBuffer
                                                .type
                                                 .match(imageTypeRegularExpression);

        var userUploadedImagePath            = userUploadedFeedMessagesLocation + 
                                               uniqueRandomImageName +
                                               '.' + 
                                               imageTypeDetected[1];

        // Save decoded binary image to disk
        try
        {
        require('fs').writeFile(userUploadedImagePath, imageBuffer.data,  
                                function() 
                                {
                                  console.log('DEBUG - feed:message: Saved to disk image attached by user:', userUploadedImagePath);
                                });
        }
        catch(error)
        {
            console.log('ERROR:', error);
        }

    }
    catch(error)
    {
        console.log('ERROR:', error);
    }

UPDATE

I found this interesting link how to solve your problem in PHP. I think you forgot to replace space by +as shown in the link.

I took this circle from http://images-mediawiki-sites.thefullwiki.org/04/1/7/5/6204600836255205.png as sample which looks like:

Next I put it through http://www.greywyvern.com/code/php/binary2base64 which returned me:

data:image/png;base64,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

saved this string to base64 which I read from in my code.

var fs      = require('fs'),
data        = fs.readFileSync('base64', 'utf8'),
base64Data,
binaryData;

base64Data  =   data.replace(/^data:image\/png;base64,/, "");
base64Data  +=  base64Data.replace('+', ' ');
binaryData  =   new Buffer(base64Data, 'base64').toString('binary');

fs.writeFile("out.png", binaryData, "binary", function (err) {
    console.log(err); // writes out file without error, but it's not a valid image
});

I get a circle back, but the funny thing is that the filesize has changed :)...

END

When you read back image I think you need to setup headers

Take for example imagepng from PHP page:

<?php
$im = imagecreatefrompng("test.png");

header('Content-Type: image/png');

imagepng($im);
imagedestroy($im);
?>

I think the second line header('Content-Type: image/png');, is important else your image will not be displayed in browser, but just a bunch of binary data is shown to browser.

In Express you would simply just use something like below. I am going to display your gravatar which is located at http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/cabf735ce7b8b4471ef46ea54f71832d?s=32&d=identicon&r=PG and is a jpeg file when you curl --head http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/cabf735ce7b8b4471ef46ea54f71832d?s=32&d=identicon&r=PG. I only request headers because else curl will display a bunch of binary stuff(Google Chrome immediately goes to download) to console:

curl --head "http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/cabf735ce7b8b4471ef46ea54f71832d?s=32&d=identicon&r=PG"
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: nginx
Date: Wed, 03 Aug 2011 12:11:25 GMT
Content-Type: image/jpeg
Connection: keep-alive
Last-Modified: Mon, 04 Oct 2010 11:54:22 GMT
Content-Disposition: inline; filename="cabf735ce7b8b4471ef46ea54f71832d.jpeg"
Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *
Content-Length: 1258
X-Varnish: 2356636561 2352219240
Via: 1.1 varnish
Expires: Wed, 03 Aug 2011 12:16:25 GMT
Cache-Control: max-age=300
Source-Age: 1482

---

$ mkdir -p ~/tmp/6922728
$ cd ~/tmp/6922728/
$ touch app.js

app.js

var app = require('express').createServer();

app.get('/', function (req, res) {
    res.contentType('image/jpeg');
    res.sendfile('cabf735ce7b8b4471ef46ea54f71832d?s=32&d=identicon&r=PG');
});

app.get('/binary', function (req, res) {
    res.sendfile('cabf735ce7b8b4471ef46ea54f71832d?s=32&d=identicon&r=PG');
});

app.listen(3000);

$ wget "http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/cabf735ce7b8b4471ef46ea54f71832d?s=32&d=identicon&r=PG"
$ node app.js

This did it for me simply and perfectly.

Excellent explanation by Scott Robinson

From image to base64 string

let buff = fs.readFileSync('stack-abuse-logo.png');
let base64data = buff.toString('base64');

From base64 string to image

let buff = new Buffer(data, 'base64');
fs.writeFileSync('stack-abuse-logo-out.png', buff);

I also had to save Base64 encoded images that are part of data URLs, so I ended up making a small npm module to do it in case I (or someone else) needed to do it again in the future. It's called ba64.

Simply put, it takes a data URL with a Base64 encoded image and saves the image to your file system. It can save synchronously or asynchronously. It also has two helper functions, one to get the file extension of the image, and the other to separate the Base64 encoding from the data: scheme prefix.

Here's an example:

var ba64 = require("ba64"),
    data_url = "data:image/jpeg;base64,[Base64 encoded image goes here]";

// Save the image synchronously.
ba64.writeImageSync("myimage", data_url); // Saves myimage.jpeg.

// Or save the image asynchronously.
ba64.writeImage("myimage", data_url, function(err){
    if (err) throw err;

    console.log("Image saved successfully");

    // do stuff
});

Install it: npm i ba64 -S. Repo is on GitHub: https://github.com/HarryStevens/ba64.

P.S. It occurred to me later that ba64 is probably a bad name for the module since people may assume it does Base64 encoding and decoding, which it doesn't (there are lots of modules that already do that). Oh well.