cbor

What is cbor?

The 'cbor' npm package is used for encoding and decoding data in the Concise Binary Object Representation (CBOR) format. CBOR is a binary data serialization format that is designed to be small, fast, and suitable for constrained environments. It is often used in IoT, web, and mobile applications where efficiency is critical.

What are cbor's main functionalities?

Encoding Data

This feature allows you to encode JavaScript objects into CBOR format. The example demonstrates encoding a simple object asynchronously.

const cbor = require('cbor');
const data = { key: 'value' };
cbor.encodeAsync(data).then(encoded => {
  console.log(encoded);
});

Decoding Data

This feature allows you to decode CBOR data back into JavaScript objects. The example shows how to decode a CBOR-encoded buffer.

const cbor = require('cbor');
const encodedData = Buffer.from('a2616b65796576616c7565', 'hex');
cbor.decodeFirst(encodedData).then(decoded => {
  console.log(decoded);
});

Streaming Encoding

This feature supports streaming encoding, which is useful for handling large datasets or continuous data streams. The example demonstrates encoding data in a stream.

const cbor = require('cbor');
const stream = cbor.encodeStream();
stream.on('data', chunk => {
  console.log(chunk);
});
stream.write({ key: 'value' });
stream.end();

Streaming Decoding

This feature supports streaming decoding, which is useful for processing large or continuous CBOR data streams. The example shows how to decode data from a stream.

const cbor = require('cbor');
const stream = cbor.decodeStream();
stream.on('data', obj => {
  console.log(obj);
});
stream.write(Buffer.from('a2616b65796576616c7565', 'hex'));
stream.end();

Other packages similar to cbor

msgpack5

The 'msgpack5' package provides MessagePack encoding and decoding, which is another binary serialization format similar to CBOR. MessagePack is also designed to be efficient and compact, making it suitable for similar use cases. Compared to CBOR, MessagePack has a slightly different data model and may offer different performance characteristics depending on the use case.

protobufjs

The 'protobufjs' package is used for encoding and decoding data in Protocol Buffers (protobuf) format, which is a language-neutral, platform-neutral, extensible mechanism for serializing structured data. Protobuf is often used in communication protocols and data storage. It is more complex and feature-rich compared to CBOR, offering schema definitions and more control over data serialization.

avsc

The 'avsc' package provides support for Apache Avro, a binary serialization format that includes rich data structures and a compact, fast binary encoding. Avro is often used in big data applications and supports schema evolution. Compared to CBOR, Avro is more focused on data interchange and storage in distributed systems.

README

cbor

Encode and parse data in the Concise Binary Object Representation (CBOR) data format (RFC8949).

MOVE TO CBOR2

NOTE

All new users and most existing users of this library should move to the cbor2 library. It is where most maintenance and support and all new features are happening.

Only catastrophic bugs will be fixed in this library going forward.

Supported Node.js versions

This project now only supports versions of Node that the Node team is currently supporting. Ava's support statement is what we will be using as well. Currently, that means Node 18+ is required. If you need to support an older version of Node (back to version 6), use cbor version 5.2.x, which will get nothing but security updates from here on out.

Installation:

$ npm install --save cbor

NOTE If you are going to use this on the web, use cbor-web instead.

If you need support for encoding and decoding BigDecimal fractions (tag 4) or BigFloats (tag 5), please see cbor-bigdecimal.

Documentation:

See the full API documentation.

For a command-line interface, see cbor-cli.

Example:

const cbor = require('cbor');
const assert = require('node:assert');

let encoded = cbor.encode(true); // Returns <Buffer f5>
cbor.decodeFirst(encoded, (error, obj) => {
  // If there was an error, error != null
  // obj is the unpacked object
  assert.ok(obj === true);
});

// Use integers as keys?
const m = new Map();
m.set(1, 2);
encoded = cbor.encode(m); // <Buffer a1 01 02>

Allows streaming as well:

const cbor = require('cbor');
const fs = require('node:fs');

const d = new cbor.Decoder();
d.on('data', obj => {
  console.log(obj);
});

const s = fs.createReadStream('foo');
s.pipe(d);

const d2 = new cbor.Decoder({input: '00', encoding: 'hex'});
d.on('data', obj => {
  console.log(obj);
});

There is also support for synchronous decodes:

try {
  console.log(cbor.decodeFirstSync('02')); // 2
  console.log(cbor.decodeAllSync('0202')); // [2, 2]
} catch (e) {
  // Throws on invalid input
}

The sync encoding and decoding are exported as a leveldb encoding, as cbor.leveldb.

highWaterMark

The synchronous routines for encoding and decoding will have problems with objects that are larger than 16kB, which the default buffer size for Node streams. There are a few ways to fix this:

• pass in a highWaterMark option with the value of the largest buffer size you think you will need:

cbor.encodeOne(new ArrayBuffer(40000), {highWaterMark: 65535});

• use stream mode. Catch the data, finish, and error events. Make sure to call end() when you're done.

const enc = new cbor.Encoder();
enc.on('data', buf => /* Send the data somewhere */ null);
enc.on('error', console.error);
enc.on('finish', () => /* Tell the consumer we are finished */ null);

enc.end(['foo', 1, false]);

• use encodeAsync(), which uses the approach from approach 2 to return a memory-inefficient promise for a Buffer.

Supported types

The following types are supported for encoding:

• boolean
• number (including -0, NaN, and ±Infinity)
• string
• Array, Set (encoded as Array)
• Object (including null), Map
• undefined
• Buffer
• Date,
• RegExp
• URL
• TypedArrays, ArrayBuffer, DataView
• Map, Set
• BigInt

Decoding supports the above types, including the following CBOR tag numbers:

Tag	Generated Type
0	Date
1	Date
2	BigInt
3	BigInt
21	Tagged, with toJSON
22	Tagged, with toJSON
23	Tagged, with toJSON
32	URL
33	Tagged
34	Tagged
35	RegExp
64	Uint8Array
65	Uint16Array
66	Uint32Array
67	BigUint64Array
68	Uint8ClampedArray
69	Uint16Array
70	Uint32Array
71	BigUint64Array
72	Int8Array
73	Int16Array
74	Int32Array
75	BigInt64Array
77	Int16Array
78	Int32Array
79	BigInt64Array
81	Float32Array
82	Float64Array
85	Float32Array
86	Float64Array
258	Set

Adding new Encoders

There are several ways to add a new encoder:

encodeCBOR method

This is the easiest approach, if you can modify the class being encoded. Add an encodeCBOR method to your class, which takes a single parameter of the encoder currently being used. Your method should return true on success, else false. Your method may call encoder.push(buffer) or encoder.pushAny(any) as needed.

For example:

class Foo {
  constructor() {
    this.one = 1;
    this.two = 2;
  }

  encodeCBOR(encoder) {
    const tagged = new Tagged(64000, [this.one, this.two]);
    return encoder.pushAny(tagged);
  }
}

You can also modify an existing type by monkey-patching an encodeCBOR function onto its prototype, but this isn't recommended.

addSemanticType

Sometimes, you want to support an existing type without modification to that type. In this case, call addSemanticType(type, encodeFunction) on an existing Encoder instance. The encodeFunction takes an encoder and an object to encode, for example:

class Bar {
  constructor() {
    this.three = 3;
  }
}
const enc = new Encoder();
enc.addSemanticType(Bar, (encoder, b) => {
  encoder.pushAny(b.three);
});

Adding new decoders

Most of the time, you will want to add support for decoding a new tag type. If the Decoder class encounters a tag it doesn't support, it will generate a Tagged instance that you can handle or ignore as needed. To have a specific type generated instead, pass a tags option to the Decoder's constructor, consisting of an object with tag number keys and function values. The function will be passed the decoded value associated with the tag, and should return the decoded value. For the Foo example above, this might look like:

const d = new Decoder({
  tags: {
    64000: val => {
      // Check val to make sure it's an Array as expected, etc.
      const foo = new Foo();
      [foo.one, foo.two] = val;
      return foo;
    },
  },
});

You can also replace the default decoders by passing in an appropriate tag function. For example:

cbor.decodeFirstSync(input, {
  tags: {
    // Replace the Tag 0 (RFC3339 Date/Time string) decoder.
    // See https://tc39.es/proposal-temporal/docs/ for the upcoming
    // Temporal built-in, which supports nanosecond time:
    0: x => Temporal.Instant.from(x),
  },
});

Developers

The tests for this package use a set of test vectors from RFC 8949 appendix A by importing a machine readable version of them from https://github.com/cbor/test-vectors. For these tests to work, you will need to use the command git submodule update --init after cloning or pulling this code. See https://gist.github.com/gitaarik/8735255#file-git_submodules-md for more information.

Get a list of build steps with npm run. I use npm run dev, which rebuilds, runs tests, and refreshes a browser window with coverage metrics every time I save a .js file. If you don't want to run the fuzz tests every time, set a NO_GARBAGE environment variable:

env NO_GARBAGE=1 npm run dev