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Base58 is a Ruby library/gem for converting ints to and from base58.

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# Base58

Ruby gem for encoding/decoding integers to/from Base58. Supports Flickr, Bitcoin, and Ripple alphabets.

## Usage

Converting an integer into a Base58 string:

```ruby
Base58.int_to_base58(12345) # => "4ER"
```

Converting a Base58 string to the represented integer:

```ruby
Base58.base58_to_int("A2Ph") # => 6639914
```

Converting binary into a Base58 string:

```ruby
Base58.binary_to_base58("\xCE\xE99\x86".force_encoding('BINARY')) # => "6hKMCS"
```

Converting a Base58 string to the represented binary:

```ruby
Base58.base58_to_binary("6hKMCS") # => "\xCE\xE99\x86"
```

## Installation

Install `base58` with the following command

```bash
gem install base58
```

Or add it to your Gemfile

```ruby
gem 'base58'
```

Then run `bundle install`.

## What is Base58?

From [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base58):

> Base58 is a group of binary-to-text encoding schemes used to represent large integers as alphanumeric text. It is similar to Base64 but has been modified to avoid both non-alphanumeric characters and letters which might look ambiguous when printed. It is therefore designed for human users who manually enter the data, copying from some visual source, but also allows easy copy and paste because a double-click will usually select the whole string.

Base58 alphabets are made up of the characters a-z, A-Z, and 0-9, with visually ambiguous characters (0, O, I, l) removed.

## Supported Alphabets

This library supports three of the most common Base58 alphabets, which have identical, but differently sorted characters.

Alphabets can be selected by passing a symbol to the second argument of `Base58.int_to_base58` and `Base58.base58_to_int`.

```ruby
Base58.int_to_base58(12345, :bitcoin)
```

`:flickr` is the default if no second argument is passed.

### Flickr

Identifier: `:flickr`

This is the default alphabet. Used to generate [Flickr short URLs](https://www.flickr.com/groups/api/discuss/72157616713786392/). The order of it's characters is numeric, lowercase-alpha, uppercase-alpha.

123456789abcdefghijkmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHJKLMNPQRSTUVWXYZ

### Bitcoin

Identifier: `:bitcoin`

The alphabet used by the [Bitcoin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin) protocol. The order of it's characters is numeric, uppercase-alpha, lowercase-alpha.

123456789ABCDEFGHJKLMNPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijkmnopqrstuvwxyz

See the "Leading Zeros" section for enabling full Bitcoin-style leading-zeros support.

### Ripple

Identifier: `:ripple`

The alphabet used by the [Ripple protocol](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripple_(payment_protocol)). The order of the characters were chosen such that the [low values match the primitives of the protocol](http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/14124/why-is-ripples-base58-alphabet-so-weird).

rpshnaf39wBUDNEGHJKLM4PQRST7VWXYZ2bcdeCg65jkm8oFqi1tuvAxyz

## Leading Zeroes

Some protocols, such as Bitcoin, require that leading zeros be encoded. Passing `true` to the third argument of binary_to_base58()` will enable this behaviour.

```ruby
bitcoin_address_hex = '00000000000000000000123456789ABCDEF0'
bitcoin_address_bin = [bitcoin_address_hex].pack('H*')

Base58.binary_to_base58(bitcoin_address_bin, :bitcoin, true) # => 111111111143c9JGph3DZ
```

## Contributing

Source repository is on [Github](https://github.com/dougal/base58), please file issues and pull requests there.

## Documentation

Documentation can be found online at [RubyDoc.info](http://www.rubydoc.info/github/dougal/base58).

Alternatively, you can generate docs from the project root with:

```bash
rake rdoc
```

## Credits

* [Joel Nordell](https://github.com/joelnordell) for various Bitcoin/Ripple support features.
  * [Jim Myhrberg](https://github.com/jimeh) for argument checking and method aliases.

## Copyright and Licence

Base58 is licensed under the MIT Licence.

base58

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