Review/comment needed for the new public java.util.Base64 class

[Joe Darcy]

Hello,

On 10/10/2012 1:03 PM, Iris Clark wrote:
> Hi, Sherman.
>
> I'm glad to see this coming in.  As you said, long overdue.
>
> I'm curious.  What are the plans are to encourage migration from the JDK private and unsupported sun.misc.BASE64{En,DE}coder classes?  Compile-time warning?  Documentation?  Something else?

On that point, sun.misc.BASE64{En,DE}coder may present a fine 
opportunity to use the @Deprecated annotation...

-Joe

>
> Thanks,
> iris
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Xueming Shen
> Sent: Wednesday, October 10, 2012 10:55 AM
> To: core-libs-dev
> Subject: Review/comment needed for the new public java.util.Base64 class
>
>
> A standard/public API for Base64 encoding and decoding has been long overdue. JDK8  has a JEP [1] for this particular request.
>
> Here is the draft proposal to add a public Base64 utility class for JDK8.
>
> http://cr.openjdk.java.net/~sherman/4235519/webrev
>
> This class basically provides 4 variants of Base64 encoding scheme,
>
> (1) the default RFC 4648, which uses standard mapping, no line breaks,
> (2) the URL-safe RFE 4648, no line breaks, use "-" and "_" to replace "+" and
>       "/" for the mapping
> (3) the default MIME style, as in RFC 2045 (and its earlier versions), which uses
>       "standard" base64 mapping, a 76 characters per line limit and uses crlf pair
>        \r\n for line break.
> (4) an extend-able MIME base64, with the char-per-line and the line
> separator(s)
>        specified by developer.
>
> The encoder/decoder now provides encoding and decoding for byte[], String, ByteBuffer and a pair of "EncoderInputStream" and "DecoderOutputStrream", which we believe/hope should satisfy most of the common use cases.
> Additional
> method(s) can be added if strongly desired.
>
> We tried couple slightly different styles of design for such this "simple" utility class [2].  We kinda concluded that the version proposed probably provides the best balance among readability, usability and extensibility.
>
> Please help review and comment on the API and implementation.
>
> Thanks!
> -Sherman
>
> [1] http://openjdk.java.net/jeps/135
> [2] http://cr.openjdk.java.net/~sherman/base64/