[question] When do you need this?

[jimmywarting]

Is this not needed if you only target node v6 and upwards?

[lonix1]

@jimmywarting Hey Jimmy did you figure this out? I'm also wondering about that...

[jimmywarting]

no, but my assumption is if you need to support node version lower then 6 you should maybe need this lib.

[lonix1]

Yeah that's what I think - this is obsolete if you are using the latest node.

I just do

Buffer.from("base64string", "base64").toString("utf8");

[jimmywarting]

Same, same. But i try to use Uint8Array instead of Buffer whenever possible if the other functionality is not needed... Gives you a better cross browser/node/deno support and the browser bundle will be a lot smaller.

[lonix1]

Interesting... I've been using Buffer in my server app (node), and window.atob / window.btoa in my client app (angular).

[jimmywarting]

i try to avoid base64 whenever possible, base64 is roughly ~33% larger in memory/size and it takes time to compile back and forth between binary and base64. Blobs and typed arrays is a good candidate when dealing with data

For example, when i want to display an image i use URL.createObjectURL(blob) instead of a base64 image url

[lonix1]

Good to know, thanks!

[feross]

If you're using this package purely as a shim, then it should not be needed in Node 6 or higher since Buffer.alloc, etc. are built in.

[jimmywarting]

Should this be like deprecated now, feels like it have done it's part...