CURL + transfer data with Base64

Question

I'm using the following CURL Call and its transfer successfully.

I've tried to send an encrypted key - which changes with each encrypted (using AES) but looks something like this: cpZa˜Hó”™itz²÷ðt?=þ|w±I†ïÛì„¡

I've been told I need to use base64 - have tried utf8_encode below. How do I use base64? Is this an option added to CURL or something encoded and decoded in PHP?

        $data = array('validation' => '1', 'encryptkey' => utf8_encode($encryptedDate));

        //utf8_encode()

        $ch = curl_init();
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, 'http://www.domain.com/this.php');
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FAILONERROR, true);
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, true);
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERPWD,$authentication);
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPAUTH, CURLAUTH_BASIC);
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_REFERER,$_SESSION['domainname']);
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS,$data);
        $result = curl_exec($ch);
        curl_close($ch);
        echo $result;

Answer 1

Use base64_encode().

Simply swap utf8_encode() with base64_encode().