Ability to enforce base64 URL encoding of a given asset

[mciesin]

Idea description
I wonder whether we could have the ability to enforce base64 URL encoding of assets by passing ?inline query parameter (as an out-of-the-box feature). Currently, assets are being inlined only automatically, based on the assetsInlineLimit option.

Use case
Being able to import, in a predictable way, base64-encoded images for libraries which expect them in such a format, e.g. pdf generating utilities.

Webpack configuration
With Webpack, it could be easily achieved by configuring a rule for assets, matching the /inline/ resource query with the asset/inline type.

Possible implementation
Probably only asset plugin would be affected. We could extract the logic behind base64 conversion from fileToBuiltUrl, and re-use it in the load function with an early return. It would be similar to the ?raw requests, so ?inline enforcement would be handled equally for both serve and build.

[chenxch]

Maybe you can refer to vite-plugin-raw-assets to implement a vite-plugin-inline-assets.

[mciesin]

@chenxch thanks for the plugin reference. It solves the issue with the inability to use ?raw queries in third-party assets though.

My idea was to have the logic behind ?inline for assets included in Vite internally, as it would nicely fit ?raw and ?url queries which are already implemented.