title: convert image to base64 with java
body: <p>I need to convert a image object to a base64 object so I can load it into the  tag on my client side.</p>
  
  <p>However I can't seem to figure out how to pull this off. Is there anyone who has a piece of code for this that I could use easily?</p>
  
  <p>This is what I use to turn the external image link into a image object</p>
  
  <pre><code>Image image = null;
  URL url = new URL(request.getParameter("hdn_path"));
  image = ImageIO.read(url);
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>not sure if I'm going about this the correct way.</p>