A base64 library?

From: Ruben Perez (rubenperez038_at_[hidden])
Date: 2024-03-19 17:46:27

Hi all,

I've been thinking of writing a base64 encoder/decoder library for
some time. I first found the need when writing ServerTech chat
(https://github.com/anarthal/servertech-chat), and I couldn't find a
library that suited my needs. All the libraries I could find were
either forgotten one-day projects with no tests, or private parts of
something bigger.

>From this issue from Beast
(https://github.com/boostorg/beast/issues/1710) it looks like this
could be useful to people.

My idea would be writing something that is:
* Boost quality - extensive testing and fuzzing.
* Configurable. My use case in ServerTech required me to not output
padding chars, for instance.
* Support for a streaming API.
* Support for calling in a constexpr context.
* I'd prefer to focus on doing base64 only and doing it well, rather
than targeting arbitrary bases.

I don't have any sample code yet. Following our recommendations, I'm
only determining interest. My questions are:
* Do you think a library like this could be useful to the C++ community?
* If the answer to the above is yes, do you think it could belong to
Boost, or would be better as a standalone library?

Regards,
Ruben.