b64_nif

Erlang's base64 module is implemented in Erlang and rather slow. This library provides a very fast alternative using aklomp's base64.

There is another library, b64fast, which takes a similar approach. This library behaves slightly differently in that it:

• Validates input while decoding (raises bagarg)
• Uses dirty schedulers for large inputs rather than a streaming approach
• Only supports Base64
• Is even faster thanks to base64 (on my machine at least)

Use

Add it to your rebar.config, for example {deps, [{b64_nif, "0.1.4"}]}.

Use b64_nif:encode/1 and b64_nif:decode/1 as drop-in replacements for base64:encode/1 and base64:decode/1.

Benchmarks

Run ./bench.sh

== Testing with 100 B ==
fun base64:encode/1: 1000000 iterations in 3047 ms: 328191 it/sec
fun b64fast:encode64/1: 1000000 iterations in 935 ms: 1069518 it/sec
fun b64_nif:encode/1: 1000000 iterations in 298 ms: 3355704 it/sec
fun base64:decode/1: 1000000 iterations in 2951 ms: 338868 it/sec
fun b64fast:decode64/1: 1000000 iterations in 908 ms: 1101321 it/sec
fun b64_nif:decode/1: 1000000 iterations in 378 ms: 2645502 it/sec

== Testing with 1 MB ==
fun base64:encode/1: 1000 iterations in 30087 ms: 33 it/sec
fun b64fast:encode64/1: 1000 iterations in 1096 ms: 912 it/sec
fun b64_nif:encode/1: 1000 iterations in 120 ms: 8333 it/sec
fun base64:decode/1: 1000 iterations in 28293 ms: 35 it/sec
fun b64fast:decode64/1: 1000 iterations in 969 ms: 1031 it/sec
fun b64_nif:decode/1: 1000 iterations in 133 ms: 7518 it/sec