Replace base64.js with atob() and btoa()

[ghost]

Is there a reason for the existence of the base64.js file? base64 encoding/decoding can be done with window.atob() and window.btoa() respectively. Mozilla mentions a "Unicode problem" with these functions, but provides a minimalistic workaround:

function utf8_to_b64( str ) {
  return window.btoa(unescape(encodeURIComponent( str )));
}

function b64_to_utf8( str ) {
  return decodeURIComponent(escape(window.atob( str )));
}

Besides, there is the following note in base64.js

// NOTE: I got rid of the utf8 encoding done by the original code, as we 
// need to replicate base64 encoding/decoding of ASCII strings

Can I remove it?

[daveschaefer]

Tracing the code, you can see we currently call encode() when parsing results from a notary:

Perspectives.notaryAjaxCallback() Pers_xml.parse_server_node() Pers_util.add_der_signature_header() Pers_Base64.encode()

However, I'm not sure that means we necessarily need to keep it. If we can provide the same functionality by using the wrapped utf8_to_b64() and b64_to_utf8() functions, replacing our current encode/decode seems fine to me. Let's add some unit tests and make sure they work before and after the change.

One reason we might want to keep them - do other browsers like Chrome expose an equivalent of window.atob() and window.btoa() that we could use? If not we may have to put something in again when we become less Firefox-centric.

Were you wanting to remove this simply because it would mean less hand-coded functionality that could already be built-in?

Not sure if @danwent has any thoughts on the original change and if this is equivalent.

[ghost]

One reason we might want to keep them - do other browsers like Chrome expose an equivalent of window.atob() and window.btoa() that we could use?

Yes, look here: CanIUse atob-btoa MDN atob -> Browser compatibility

Were you wanting to remove this simply because it would mean less hand-coded functionality that could already be built-in?

Yes.

[daveschaefer]

caniuse.com

Great site!

Alright, if we can completely replace these I'm all for removing them. Thanks for digging this up. Let's add some unit tests and make the swap.

[daveschaefer]

This was fixed in version 4.6. Closing!