Base64 encode Text

[timspeetjens]

Is there a possibility to base64 encode Text? If not, would you consider adding something like Text/base64encode?

While a lot can be said about Kubernetes Secrets, this would improve the process of creating them using dhall-kubernetes.

[Gabriella439]

I'd be fine with adding some sort of base-64 encoding, but my intuition here is that it would first need to be preceded by language support for some sort of Bytes type

The reason why is that I tend to view base-64 encoding of Text as the composition of two separate operations:

• Text/encodeUTF8 : Text → Bytes
• Bytes/encodeBase64 : Bytes → Text

… so that users can select an encoding other than UTF8 when deciding how to base-64 encode Text.

[philandstuff]

Yeah i agree with @Gabriel439 for similar reasons: the point of base64 is to represent arbitrary binary data as text, but right now we don’t have a way to represent arbitrary binary data, only text, and text can be represented as Text without the need for base64.

[timspeetjens]

@Gabriel439 what you propose makes sense, indeed.

This would also open up possibilities to add binary files in ConfigMaps in dhall-kubernetes.

When binary files must be added, it could be accomplished like

let asset = ./truststore.jks as Bytes

let assetB64 = Bytes/encodeBase64 asset

in  k.ConfigMap::{
      ...
      , binaryData = Some ( toMap { `truststore.jks` = assetB64 )
}

[PierreR]

For reference, Cue supports bytes that are converted to base64 when emitting json: https://cue.googlesource.com/cue/+/55102471f0fc4bcd261e87645461093f7527b4e5/doc/tutorial/basics/bytes.md