Currently, I am developing a Python RESTful API and facing the challenge of transmitting bytes-encoded data (specifically encrypted data using a public RSA key from the rsa package) over the network in JSON format.
This is what the scenario looks like:
>>> import rsa
>>> pubkey, privkey = rsa.newkeys(512, True) # Generating a pair of 512-bit public/private RSA keys for demonstration purposes.
>>> encStr = rsa.encrypt(b"Test string", pubkey) # Encrypting a bytes object with the public key
>>> encStr
b'r\x10\x03e\xc6*\xa8\xb1\xee\xbd\x18\x0f\x7f\xecz\xcex\xabP~\xb3]\x8f)R\x9b>i\x03\xab-m\x0c\x19\xd7\xa5f$\x07\xc1;X\x0b\xaa2\x99\xa8&\xfc/\x9f\x05!nk\x93%\xc0\xf5\x1d\xf8C\x1fo'
The variable "encStr" contains the data to be sent. However, the encoding used is not immediately clear, as it's not specified in the package documentation. If you have any insights on this, please do share :)
>>> encStr.decode("utf-8")
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
UnicodeDecodeError: 'utf-8' codec cannot decode byte 0x8e in position 0: invalid start byte
>>> encStr.decode("latin1")
'\x8eM\x96Æ\'zÈZ\x89\x85±\x98Z¯Ûzùæ¯;£zñ8\x9b§Ù\x9dÏ\x8eâ0®\x89ó(*?\x92ªg\x12ôsä\x1d\x96\x19\x82\x19-3\x15SBýh"3òÖß\x91Ô' # This could be it
>>> encStr.decode("latin1").encode("latin1")
b'\x8eM\x96\xc6\'z\xc8Z\x89\x85\xb1\x98Z\xaf\xdbz\xf9\xe6\xaf;\xa3z\xf18\x9b\xa7\xd9\x9d\xcf\x8e\xe20\xae\x89\xf3(*?\x92\xaag\x12... # Garbled data
After some experimentation, I managed to obtain a readable string using base64 encoding.
>>> import base64
>>> b64_encStr = base64.b64encode(encStr)
>>> b64_encStr
b'jk2Wxid6yFqJhbGYWq/bevnmrzujevE4m6fZnc+O4jCuifMoKj+SqmcS9HPkHZYZghktMxVTQv1oIjPy1t+R1A=='
>>> b64_encStr.decode("utf-8")
'jk2Wxid6yFqJhbGYWq/bevnmrzujevE4m6fZnc+O4jCuifMoKj+SqmcS9HPkHZYZghktMxVTQv1oIjPy1t+R1A=='
At this point, all that remains is transmitting this encoded data. Yet, I am curious if there exists a more efficient method (shorter strings, fewer operations considering client-side encoding and server-side decoding, etc).
Thank you!
Shawn