cbor2

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

This package supersedes node-cbor, with the following goals:

• Web-first. Usable in Node and Deno.
• Simpler where possible. Remove non-core features in favor of extensibility.
• Synchronous decoding. Removes streaming capabilities that are rarely used.
• Complete break of API compatibility, allowing use of newer JavaScript constructs.
• No work-arounds for older environments.

Supported Node.js versions

This project now only supports versions of Node.js that the Node team is currently supporting. Currently, that means Node 18+ is required.

Installation

npm install --save cbor2

Documentation

See the full API documentation.

Example:

import {decode, diagnose, encode} from 'cbor';

const encoded = encode(true); // Returns Uint8Array(1) [ 245 ]
decode(encoded); // Returns true

// Use integers as keys:
const m = new Map();
m.set(1, 25);
encode(m); // Returns Uint8Array(3) [ 161, 1, 24, 25 ]
diagnose(encode(m)); // {1: 25_0}

Supported types

If you load cbor2 using import {decode, encode} from 'cbor2';, all of the type converters will be loaded automatically. If you import only pieces of the API and you want the type converters loaded, please also do import 'cbor2/types';.

The following types are supported for encoding:

• boolean
• number (including -0, NaN, and ±Infinity)
• string
• bigint
• Array
• Set
• Object (including null)
• Map
• undefined
• Date,
• RegExp
• URL
• TypedArrays: Uint8Array is mapped to a CBOR byte array, others are tagged
• Boxed primitive types: String, Number, BigInt, Boolean
• cbor2.Simple
• cbor2.Tag

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

Adding new Encoders

There are several ways to add a new encoder:

toCBOR method

This is the easiest approach, if you can modify the class being encoded. Add a toCBOR() method to your class, which should return a two-element array containing the tag number and data item that encodes your class. If the tag number is NaN, no tag will be written. If you return undefined, nothing will be written. In this case you will likely write custom bytes to the Writer instance that is passed in, perhaps using the encoding options.

For example:

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

  toCBOR(_writer, _options) {
    return [64000, [this.one, this.two]];
  }
}

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

toJSON() method

If your object does not have a toCBOR() method, but does have a toJSON() method, the value returned from toJSON() will be used to serialize the object.

registerEncoder

Sometimes, you want to support an existing type without modification to that type. In this case, call registerEncoder(type, encodeFunction). The encodeFunction takes an object instance and returns the same type as toCBOR above:

import {registerEncoder} from 'cbor2/encoder';

class Bar {
  constructor() {
    this.three = 3;
  }
}
registerEncoder(Bar, (b, _writer, _options) => [NaN, 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 Tag instance that you can handle or ignore as needed. To have a specific type generated instead, call Tag.registerDecoder() with the tag number and a function that will convert the tags value to the appropriate type. For the Foo example above, this might look like:

import {Tag} from 'cbor2/tag';

Tag.registerDecoder(64000, tag => new Foo(tag.contents[0], tag.contents[1]));

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

// Tag 0 is Date/Time as an ISO-8601 string
import 'cbor2/types';
import {Tag} from 'cbor2/tag';

Tag.registerDecoder(0, ({contents}) => Temporal.Instant.from(contents));

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 the git docs for more information.