Exercise: Convert Data between Decimal, Base58, and Hex

Base58 and Hex

Let's convert some data! We'll start by using Python to play with base58. As this is a new data encoding method, created for Bitcoin, it's not standard and we'll need to import a library to work with it. import base58

Now we'll create a string to convert to base58.

mystring = b'hello world'

And do the conversion.

mybase58 = base58.b58encode(mystring)

And have a look at it.

print('Base58 String:')
print(mybase58)

Now let's try the reverse. Below is a base58 string. What does it say?

5QWTsqdM9CC9on

Use base58.b58decode() to find out!

Hex is a much more common format than base58. As such, there is a Python function for converting a number into hex format. Let's have a quick look at it.

mynumber = [an integer number]

myhexnumber = hex(mynumber)

print('Hex number:')
print(myhexnumber)

PEM and DER

Now let's play with Pem and DER encoding. First let's use OpenSSL (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenSSL) on the command line to generate a key in PEM format.

$ openssl genrsa -out private.pem

And take a look at it.

$ cat private.pem

You can tell that it's in base64 due to the special characters not found in base58?

Now let's convert the file to the DER format.

$ openssl rsa -in private.pem -out privkey.der -outform der

And take a look at it now.

$ cat privkey.der

Is it a bunch of gibberish? That's because DER is a binary format and binary doesn't display very well on the command line. So let's try displaying the file in hex.

$ xxd -p privkey.der

Can you spot any of the DER tags we covered in section 5.2?

Source: Saylor Academy
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.