@jprochazk/cbor

cbor

JavaScript implementation of the CBOR RFC 7049.

Usage

> npm install cbor@npm:jprochazk/cbor

The above command will install the library under the cbor alias.

The API is self-explanatory:

import CBOR from "cbor";

// Initialize some data
const json = {
    "key": "value",
    "another key": [
        1, 2, 3
    ],
    "number": 3.141592653589793
    "nulls are also encoded": null
};

const encoded = CBOR.encode(json); // ArrayBuffer
const decoded = CBOR.decode(encoded); // { ... }

// You can also encode into a pre-allocated buffer
const buffer = new ArrayBuffer(4096);
const encoded = CBOR.encodeInto(data, buffer);

Benchmarks

Speed was one of my main concerns when writing this library. Benchmark is available here.

Browser	CBOR.decode	CBOR.encode	CBOR.encodeInto
Chrome	5225 ops/s	8998 ops/s	9268 ops/s
Firefox	20454 ops/s	22323 ops/s	22900 ops/s

Results are on a i5-8600k intel processor. The JSON data used in the test is 2 KB decoded and 1.8 KB encoded. This means the library can decode at 13 MB/s and encode at 10 MB/s in Chrome, and around 2.5~4x as much in Firefox.

You can squeeze out a bit more performance if you use CBOR.encodeInto with a sufficiently large buffer. the CBOR.encode default is 1024 bytes, which should be enough for the vast majority of uses, but if you ever find yourself using more than that, utilize CBOR.encodeInto.

Notes

This library is meant for use in both Node & browsers. Minimum supported Node version is 11.

There are a few things from the specification which are currently unimplemented:

• Byte strings
• Tags, and the items they represent:
  • date/time, bignum/bigfloat as byte string, and others
• 16-bit float (IEEE754 binary16)
• Integers larger than 32 bit (BigInt)

If you need one or more of these features, submit an issue.