👪🗾🤵🐯 Base Emoji 🦧🥅🔝🚏

There is base32, there is base64, now there is base-emoji!

Installation

Install base-emoji as a cli executable using npm:

npm install -g @oktupol/base-emoji

or as a library inside your Javascript or Typescript project:

npm install @oktupol/base-emoji

Usage

CLI

• Encode data from stdin:

  echo 'Hello World' | base-emoji
  
  ==> 🐅🚓📿🙉🤍🐝🕎🚥🌿🤛🕓

• Decode with the flag -d

  echo '🐎🍻🪖🦭🍃🍻🪶🦈🍆🌗👩🍶🕗' | base-emoji -d
  
  ==> I like emojis

• Encode or decode data from a file

  cat.jpg - 2009, Michael Wilson CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

  base-emoji cat.jpg
  
  ==>
  ➿🌾📛🤹🤜😡🗻🦕😀😆📖🤹💅😀😀🙂😀🤪🍙🤹😘😀😀😃😀😀🤣🍶😀😀😀😀
  😀😀😀🤾🪣🙂🍃😻🧇📺🕎🧾🧇🥻😇🎷👨😁🥄🚇🐪😟🤹😀😀😀🤑🦝😅🍑😀📿
  🤘💋👗🤹😀🤨...

  cat.jpg.emoji - full output of above command

• Direct the output of any command into a file

  base-emoji -d dog.jpg.emoji > dog.jpg

• When encoding, optionally use the -a flag to armor the output

  base-emoji -a some-document.pdf
    
  ==> 
  🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔢💝🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵
  🏦👭🪛👞🤥🍑⏳😀😀🤴🚎😲🦥😀😀🍀😀😀🤙🥃🤪😀😀🏃🧪🚿💾😀😀😦👮🚇
  ...
  🔃😀😀😀🦄😫🪛🦶👪🥃🖤🕓
  🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔢💔🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵

• When encoding with armor, optionally use the --descriptor option to specify a descriptor

  gpg --export-secret-key [email protected] | base-emoji -a --descriptor '🤫🔑🙊'
    
  ==>
  🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🤫🔑🙊💝🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵
  🕧💦🦲👍🕞🧏🪝🫕📤🥯🦭🥬🚸🪦🍇🪶🍯🐸🥊➖🐧➿🪠🎁🪥🥌🐝🔙🍦🧂🕞🐴
  ...
  🚣🚶💒🦔🦃👂🎱😒🌱⛅🌵🕓
  🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🤫🔑🙊💔🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵    
  

• For a complete list of available options, run

  base-emoji --help

Inside a Node project

The base-emoji library can be imported using

CommonJS:

const { BaseEmoji } = require('@oktupol/base-emoji');

ES6, Typescript:

import { BaseEmoji } from '@oktupol/base-emoji';

There are two functions:

BaseEmoji.encode()

Usage:

const result = BaseEmoji.encode(data, options);

Parameters:

• data (required) being any of:

  • a string
  • an ArrayBufferLike (e.g. ArrayBuffer, Uint8Array)

• options (optional) - an object with following structure; all keys are optional:

  {
    armor?: boolean;
    armorDescriptor?: boolean;
    wrap?: number;
  }

  • armor - if true, the resulting output will be armored.
  • armorDescriptor - when armored, the value will be used in the header and footer of the output
  • wrap - if provided, wrap after n characters

BaseEmoji.decode()

Usage:

const result = BaseEmoji.decode(data, options);

Parameters:

• data (required) - A base-emoji encoded string
• options (optional) - an object with following structure; all keys are optional:

  {
    output: 'string' | 'binary'
  }

  • output - return the output as String, if string, or as Uint8Array, if binary

How does it work

The prinicple is identical to that of base64. In base64, data bits are rearranged from their original 8-tuple bytes into 6-tuples, of which there are 64, and each of these 6-tuples is then represented with one ascii character.

bytes  |    104 = h    |    105 = i    |     33 = !    | ...
DATA   |0 1 1 0 1 0.0 0'0 1 1 0.1 0 0 1'0 0.1 0 0 0 0 1| ...
base64 |   26 = a  |    6 = G  |   36 = k  |   33 = h  | ...

Therefore, the base64 representation of hi! is aGkh.

In base-emoji, 1024 different symbols are used for representing 10-tuples.

bytes      |    104 = h    |    105 = i    |     33 = !    |              ...
DATA       |0 1 1 0 1 0 0 0'0 1.1 0 1 0 0 1'0 0 1 0.0 0 0 1'0 0 0 0 0 0.0 ...
base-emoji |      417 = 🍒     |      658 = 🌒     |       64 = 😟     |  ...

The complete list of emojis is located in emoji-map.json

Padding

Since 10 quite obviously doesn't divide evenly into 8, base-emoji-encoded data contains a few bits more of information at the end than the original data. In case of above example, the base-emoji encoded representation of the string hi! has 6 bits of information overhanging. This is important to know especially once there are is an overhang of 8 bits, because then it would otherwise be ambiguous whether the last 8 bits are a byte of the original information or not.

To indicate the length of the overhang, following symbols are appended to the end of the base-emoji encoded string:

| Padding character | 🕛 | 🕐 | 🕑 | 🕒 | 🕓 | 🕔 | 🕕 | 🕖 | 🕗 | 🕘 | |-------------------|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|----| | Bits of overhang | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 |

Whereas the padding character for 0 bits of overhang is optional, and the characters for 1, 3, 5, 7 and 9 bits can't realistically occur.

In above example, there are six bits of overhang, meaning the emoji representation receives the padding character 🕕. Hence, the full base-emoji representation of hi! is 🍒🌒😟🕕.

Efficiency

All that being said, base-emoji is horribly inefficient at encoding data.

In base64, where every 6-tuple of bits is encoded in one ascii character of one byte, the encoded data size is 4/3 times the original data size, i.e. around 33.3% larger.

In base-emoji, we use 1024 symbols to encode 10-tuples, however, these 1024 symbols are Unicode! An exact number can't be given due to unicode characters being of variable size, but a quick test with 1000 random bytes showed a threefold increase.

head -c 1000 /dev/urandom | base64 | wc -c
==> 1354

head -c 1000 /dev/urandom | base32 | wc -c
==> 1622

head -c 1000 /dev/urandom | base-emoji | wc -c
==> about 3175