Quickly encode a file in ruby to base64

base64_encode.rb

require 'base64'

# Open the file you wish to encode
data = File.open('/Users/bkenny/Desktop/d3cce16ee41411e296c022000a1f980f_101.mp4').read

# Encode the puppy
encoded = Base64.encode64(data)

# Spit it out into one continous string
puts encoded.gsub(/\n/,"")

For anyone else that comes across that was struggling like me, I've found I have to use .binread instead of .read to correctly encode an uploaded image file (or more specifically, the tempfile that rails creates in that situation), otherwise the base64 encoding data comes out woefully short and you'll get invalid results trying to decode or send to an external API (such as Google Cloud Vision).