Add some documentation and examples for Base64 encode64 and decode64, and encode64s.

2 files changed, 16 insertions, 2 deletions

diff --git a/activesupport/lib/active_support/base64.rb b/activesupport/lib/active_support/base64.rb
index 602eef06b2..acb8e5a967 100644
--- a/activesupport/lib/active_support/base64.rb
+++ b/activesupport/lib/active_support/base64.rb
@@ -7,13 +7,24 @@ module ActiveSupport
   if defined? ::Base64
     Base64 = ::Base64
   else
-    # Ruby 1.9 doesn't provide base64, so we wrap this here
+    # Base64 provides utility methods for encoding and de-coding binary data 
+    # using a base 64 representation. A base 64 representation of binary data
+    # consists entirely of printable US-ASCII characters. The Base64 module
+    # is included in Ruby 1.8, but has been removed in Ruby 1.9.
     module Base64
-
+      # Encodes a string to its base 64 representation. Each 60 characters of
+      # output is separated by a newline character.
+      #
+      #  ActiveSupport::Base64.encode64("Original unencoded string") 
+      #  # => "T3JpZ2luYWwgdW5lbmNvZGVkIHN0cmluZw==\n"
       def self.encode64(data)
         [data].pack("m")
       end
 
+      # Decodes a base 64 encoded string to its original representation.
+      #
+      #  ActiveSupport::Base64.decode64("T3JpZ2luYWwgdW5lbmNvZGVkIHN0cmluZw==") 
+      #  # => "Original unencoded string"
       def self.decode64(data)
         data.unpack("m").first
       end
diff --git a/activesupport/lib/active_support/core_ext/base64/encoding.rb b/activesupport/lib/active_support/core_ext/base64/encoding.rb
index 1a40da8785..a9656c138e 100644
--- a/activesupport/lib/active_support/core_ext/base64/encoding.rb
+++ b/activesupport/lib/active_support/core_ext/base64/encoding.rb
@@ -4,6 +4,9 @@ module ActiveSupport #:nodoc:
       module Encoding
         # Encodes the value as base64 without the newline breaks. This makes the base64 encoding readily usable as URL parameters 
         # or memcache keys without further processing.
+        #
+        #  ActiveSupport::Base64.encode64s("Original unencoded string") 
+        #  # => "T3JpZ2luYWwgdW5lbmNvZGVkIHN0cmluZw=="
         def encode64s(value)
           encode64(value).gsub(/\n/, '')
         end