TypeError: a bytes-like object is required, not 'str' when using b64encode()

The error occurs when the Python’s base64.b64encode method has been called upon UTF-8 string. This article tells how to resolve this issue properly.

Base64 module in Python and b64encode()/b64decode()

In Python programming language, the standard library has base64 module responsible for Base64 conversion of strings. It contains multiple encoding/decoding methods for a number of radix conversions.

To convert a string into Base64 representation you have to use base64.b64encode. Yet you should convert the input string into bytes representation first, using the standard encode() method as shown in the example.

The following example will fail (notice the ˚ UTF character in the source string):

>>> import base64
>>> base64.b64encode('asd˚')
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.8/lib/python3.8/base64.py", line 58, in b64encode
    encoded = binascii.b2a_base64(s, newline=False)
TypeError: a bytes-like object is required, not 'str'

And here is the solution (such easy!):

>>> import base64
>>> base64.b64encode('asd˚'.encode('utf-8'))
b'YXNky5o='

Written by Vladimir Ignatev