Base58 encoding in ruby

Question

I am following the below mentioned steps to base58 encode:

# 1 - Take the corresponding public key generated with it (65 bytes, 1 byte 0x04, 32 bytes corresponding to X coordinate, 32 bytes corresponding to Y coordinate)

  sender = '028401a2e512b1b91b882ee1c9291cd407c10916bf791662f7189c9c805643e51c'

# 2 - Perform SHA-256 hashing on the public key

  sender = Digest::SHA256.new.update(sender)

# 3 - Perform RIPEMD-160 hashing on the result of SHA-256

  sender = Digest::RMD160.new.update(sender.to_s)

# 4 - Add version byte in front of RIPEMD-160 hash (0x00 for Main Network)

  sender = '00' + sender.to_s

# 5 - Perform SHA-256 hash on the extended RIPEMD-160 result

  checksum = Digest::SHA256.new.update(sender.to_s)

# 6 - Perform SHA-256 hash on the result of the previous SHA-256 hash

  checksum = Digest::SHA256.new.update(checksum.to_s)

# 7 - Take the first 4 bytes of the second SHA-256 hash. This is the address checksum

  checksum = checksum.to_s[0,8]

# 8 - Add the 4 checksum bytes from point 7 at the end of extended RIPEMD-160 hash from point 4. This is the 25-byte binary Bitcoin Address.

  sender += checksum

Everything works fine till step 8. But on step 9 I get an error:

/path/to/base58.rb:23:in `int_to_base58': Value passed is not an Integer. (ArgumentError)

Need help to find a solution.

Answer 1

Seems like a hexadecimal number is stuck in a string, make it a number:

2.0.0p247 :001 > require 'base58'

 => true

2.0.0p247 :002 > x = '0073eb40b21b02c08e93f6ef1bec5828763ac89e456c2f6fec'

 => "0073eb40b21b02c08e93f6ef1bec5828763ac89e456c2f6fec"

2.0.0p247 :003 > Base58.encode(x.to_i(16))

 => "byVwGWzMZZ7HwsufSQx6T2pRapGZWdkAL"

This should work.