- From: Arun Ranganathan <arun@mozilla.com>
- Date: Mon, 17 Aug 2009 18:01:13 -0700
- To: "Nikunj R. Mehta" <nikunj.mehta@oracle.com>
- CC: Jonas Sicking <jonas@sicking.cc>, Web Applications Working Group WG <public-webapps@w3.org>
Nikunj R. Mehta wrote: > > On Aug 5, 2009, at 6:55 PM, Jonas Sicking wrote: > >> What's the use-case for getAsBase64? > > > I have another use case for this. The Atom Publishing protocol per RFC > 5023 [1] accepts inline binary data represented in base 64 encoding. > In order to submit binary inline content in an Atom entry to an Atom > server, it would be necessary to getAsBase64() Specifically, atom:entry can contain Base64-encoded content [2]; I'm not sure it allows *other ways* to submit inline binary content. I suppose one reason to keep the ability to get data in Base64 is for legacy reasons, since it happens to be a convenient way to get binary stuff into web content (and ultimately onto servers). The problem is that it is not as useful within webapps (at least, not as useful as binary content). Use cases submitted till now involve *submitting* binary content in Base64 to servers that can handle Base64, but not doing anything useful with Base64 *within* the web app (where I suspect the first thing someone might do is to convert it to a binary string again). I suppose one reason to keep it around is if: 1. Web app asks user to pick file 2. File is picked and extracted as Base64 3. Atom "container" with Base64 is submitted via XHR using the Atom Publishing Protocol [1]. I'm willing to keep a way to get data as Base64 around for such cases. -- A* > Nikunj > http://o-micron.blogspot.com > > [1] http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5023 [2] http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4287.txt
Received on Tuesday, 18 August 2009 01:01:57 UTC