andrasq/node-bxson

compact json-like binary serialization

bxson

bxjson is a binary data exchange format similar in scope and intent to JSON. It supports only numbers, strings, arrays and hashes (and a few atomic types), but not RegExp, Date or other non-trivial types.

bxjson serializes arrays and objects using a variable-length encoding: the end of the data can only be determined by traversing the contained elements.

To run the tests check out the repo.

const bxson = require('bxson');
bxson.encode({ a: 1, b: 2.5, c: true, d: [] });
// => <Buffer f4 c1 61 01 c1 62 4f 40 04 00 00 00 00 00 00 c1 63 43 c1 64 e0>

Api

encode( item )

Return a Buffer with the item serialized to a sequence of bytes. The item may be a primitive or compound (array, object). The length of the returned Buffer is the size of the serialized item.

Serialization is similar to JSON, with some minor differences:

• unlike JSON, undefined values are encoded to undefined and not skipped

• unlike JSON, functions, bigints, Symbols are encoded to undefined and not skipped

• unliked JSON, missing elements in sparse arrays are encoded as undefined not null

• unlike JSON, Buffers encode to their binary contents and not to {"type":"Buffer","data":[...]}

• like JSON, properties of arrays are not encoded, only their contents

• like JSON, objects with a toJSON() method are first converted with their toJSON method before serialization (but not Buffer)

• like JSON, items that are converted with toJSON are decoded to their converted form

• like JSON, because Date has a toJSON method, it is encoded to an ISO datetime string and is deencoded to a string

decode( bytes )

Recover the item that corresponds to the bytes. If bytes is longer than the encoded item, only The first encoded item is decoded and returned.

Todo

• time optimal utf8 encode/decode tradeoff length
• time unified vs split encodeLength vs encodeNumber
• time unified vs split uint/negint types
• try to use pushbuf in qbson too (instead of calculating size)

Changelog

0.0.5 - fix integer encoding 0.0.4 - pushbuf tests 0.0.3 - published repo