[ViewVC] Annotation of: cvs/CBOR-XS/README

NAME
    CBOR::XS - Concise Binary Object Representation (CBOR, RFC7049)

SYNOPSIS
     use CBOR::XS;

     $binary_cbor_data = encode_cbor $perl_value;
     $perl_value       = decode_cbor $binary_cbor_data;

     # OO-interface

     $coder = CBOR::XS->new;
     #TODO

DESCRIPTION
    WARNING! THIS IS A PRE-ALPHA RELEASE! IT WILL CRASH, CORRUPT YOUR DATA
    AND EAT YOUR CHILDREN!

    This module converts Perl data structures to CBOR and vice versa. Its
    primary goal is to be *correct* and its secondary goal is to be *fast*.
    To reach the latter goal it was written in C.

    See MAPPING, below, on how CBOR::XS maps perl values to CBOR values and
    vice versa.

FUNCTIONAL INTERFACE
    The following convenience methods are provided by this module. They are
    exported by default:

    $cbor_data = encode_cbor $perl_scalar
        Converts the given Perl data structure to CBOR representation.
        Croaks on error.

    $perl_scalar = decode_cbor $cbor_data
        The opposite of "encode_cbor": expects a valid CBOR string to parse,
        returning the resulting perl scalar. Croaks on error.

OBJECT-ORIENTED INTERFACE
    The object oriented interface lets you configure your own encoding or
    decoding style, within the limits of supported formats.

    $cbor = new CBOR::XS
        Creates a new CBOR::XS object that can be used to de/encode CBOR
        strings. All boolean flags described below are by default
        *disabled*.

        The mutators for flags all return the CBOR object again and thus
        calls can be chained:

        #TODO my $cbor = CBOR::XS->new->encode ({a => [1,2]});

    $cbor = $cbor->max_depth ([$maximum_nesting_depth])
    $max_depth = $cbor->get_max_depth
        Sets the maximum nesting level (default 512) accepted while encoding
        or decoding. If a higher nesting level is detected in CBOR data or a
        Perl data structure, then the encoder and decoder will stop and
        croak at that point.

        Nesting level is defined by number of hash- or arrayrefs that the
        encoder needs to traverse to reach a given point or the number of
        "{" or "[" characters without their matching closing parenthesis
        crossed to reach a given character in a string.

        Setting the maximum depth to one disallows any nesting, so that
        ensures that the object is only a single hash/object or array.

        If no argument is given, the highest possible setting will be used,
        which is rarely useful.

        Note that nesting is implemented by recursion in C. The default
        value has been chosen to be as large as typical operating systems
        allow without crashing.

        See SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS, below, for more info on why this is
        useful.

    $cbor = $cbor->max_size ([$maximum_string_size])
    $max_size = $cbor->get_max_size
        Set the maximum length a CBOR string may have (in bytes) where
        decoding is being attempted. The default is 0, meaning no limit.
        When "decode" is called on a string that is longer then this many
        bytes, it will not attempt to decode the string but throw an
        exception. This setting has no effect on "encode" (yet).

        If no argument is given, the limit check will be deactivated (same
        as when 0 is specified).

        See SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS, below, for more info on why this is
        useful.

    $cbor_data = $cbor->encode ($perl_scalar)
        Converts the given Perl data structure (a scalar value) to its CBOR
        representation.

    $perl_scalar = $cbor->decode ($cbor_data)
        The opposite of "encode": expects CBOR data and tries to parse it,
        returning the resulting simple scalar or reference. Croaks on error.

    ($perl_scalar, $octets) = $cbor->decode_prefix ($cbor_data)
        This works like the "decode" method, but instead of raising an
        exception when there is trailing garbage after the CBOR string, it
        will silently stop parsing there and return the number of characters
        consumed so far.

        This is useful if your CBOR texts are not delimited by an outer
        protocol and you need to know where the first CBOR string ends amd
        the next one starts.

           CBOR::XS->new->decode_prefix ("......")
           => ("...", 3)

MAPPING
    This section describes how CBOR::XS maps Perl values to CBOR values and
    vice versa. These mappings are designed to "do the right thing" in most
    circumstances automatically, preserving round-tripping characteristics
    (what you put in comes out as something equivalent).

    For the more enlightened: note that in the following descriptions,
    lowercase *perl* refers to the Perl interpreter, while uppercase *Perl*
    refers to the abstract Perl language itself.

  CBOR -> PERL
    True, False
        These CBOR values become "CBOR::XS::true" and "CBOR::XS::false",
        respectively. They are overloaded to act almost exactly like the
        numbers 1 and 0. You can check whether a scalar is a CBOR boolean by
        using the "CBOR::XS::is_bool" function.

    null
        A CBOR Null value becomes "undef" in Perl.

  PERL -> CBOR
    The mapping from Perl to CBOR is slightly more difficult, as Perl is a
    truly typeless language, so we can only guess which CBOR type is meant
    by a Perl value.

    hash references
        Perl hash references become CBOR maps. As there is no inherent
        ordering in hash keys (or CBOR maps), they will usually be encoded
        in a pseudo-random order.

    array references
        Perl array references become CBOR arrays.

    other references
        Other unblessed references are generally not allowed and will cause
        an exception to be thrown, except for references to the integers 0
        and 1, which get turned into "False" and "True" in CBOR.

    CBOR::XS::true, CBOR::XS::false
        These special values become CBOR True and CBOR False values,
        respectively. You can also use "\1" and "\0" directly if you want.

    blessed objects
        Blessed objects are not directly representable in CBOR. TODO See the
        "allow_blessed" and "convert_blessed" methods on various options on
        how to deal with this: basically, you can choose between throwing an
        exception, encoding the reference as if it weren't blessed, or
        provide your own serialiser method.

    simple scalars
        TODO Simple Perl scalars (any scalar that is not a reference) are
        the most difficult objects to encode: CBOR::XS will encode undefined
        scalars as CBOR "Null" values, scalars that have last been used in a
        string context before encoding as CBOR strings, and anything else as
        number value:

           # dump as number
           encode_cbor [2]                      # yields [2]
           encode_cbor [-3.0e17]                # yields [-3e+17]
           my $value = 5; encode_cbor [$value]  # yields [5]

           # used as string, so dump as string
           print $value;
           encode_cbor [$value]                 # yields ["5"]

           # undef becomes null
           encode_cbor [undef]                  # yields [null]

        You can force the type to be a CBOR string by stringifying it:

           my $x = 3.1; # some variable containing a number
           "$x";        # stringified
           $x .= "";    # another, more awkward way to stringify
           print $x;    # perl does it for you, too, quite often

        You can force the type to be a CBOR number by numifying it:

           my $x = "3"; # some variable containing a string
           $x += 0;     # numify it, ensuring it will be dumped as a number
           $x *= 1;     # same thing, the choice is yours.

        You can not currently force the type in other, less obscure, ways.
        Tell me if you need this capability (but don't forget to explain why
        it's needed :).

        Note that numerical precision has the same meaning as under Perl (so
        binary to decimal conversion follows the same rules as in Perl,
        which can differ to other languages). Also, your perl interpreter
        might expose extensions to the floating point numbers of your
        platform, such as infinities or NaN's - these cannot be represented
        in CBOR, and it is an error to pass those in.

  CBOR and JSON
    TODO

SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS
    When you are using CBOR in a protocol, talking to untrusted potentially
    hostile creatures requires relatively few measures.

    First of all, your CBOR decoder should be secure, that is, should not
    have any buffer overflows. Obviously, this module should ensure that and
    I am trying hard on making that true, but you never know.

    Second, you need to avoid resource-starving attacks. That means you
    should limit the size of CBOR data you accept, or make sure then when
    your resources run out, that's just fine (e.g. by using a separate
    process that can crash safely). The size of a CBOR string in octets is
    usually a good indication of the size of the resources required to
    decode it into a Perl structure. While CBOR::XS can check the size of
    the CBOR text, it might be too late when you already have it in memory,
    so you might want to check the size before you accept the string.

    Third, CBOR::XS recurses using the C stack when decoding objects and
    arrays. The C stack is a limited resource: for instance, on my amd64
    machine with 8MB of stack size I can decode around 180k nested arrays
    but only 14k nested CBOR objects (due to perl itself recursing deeply on
    croak to free the temporary). If that is exceeded, the program crashes.
    To be conservative, the default nesting limit is set to 512. If your
    process has a smaller stack, you should adjust this setting accordingly
    with the "max_depth" method.

    Something else could bomb you, too, that I forgot to think of. In that
    case, you get to keep the pieces. I am always open for hints, though...

    Also keep in mind that CBOR::XS might leak contents of your Perl data
    structures in its error messages, so when you serialise sensitive
    information you might want to make sure that exceptions thrown by
    CBOR::XS will not end up in front of untrusted eyes.

CBOR IMPLEMENTATION NOTES
    This section contains some random implementation notes. They do not
    describe guaranteed behaviour, but merely behaviour as-is implemented
    right now.

    64 bit integers are only properly decoded when Perl was built with 64
    bit support.

    Strings and arrays are encoded with a definite length. Hashes as well,
    unless they are tied (or otherwise magical).

    Only the double data type is supported for NV data types - when Perl
    uses long double to represent floating point values, they might not be
    encoded properly. Half precision types are accepted, but not encoded.

    Strict mode and canonical mode are not implemented.

THREADS
    This module is *not* guaranteed to be thread safe and there are no plans
    to change this until Perl gets thread support (as opposed to the
    horribly slow so-called "threads" which are simply slow and bloated
    process simulations - use fork, it's *much* faster, cheaper, better).

    (It might actually work, but you have been warned).

BUGS
    While the goal of this module is to be correct, that unfortunately does
    not mean it's bug-free, only that I think its design is bug-free. If you
    keep reporting bugs they will be fixed swiftly, though.

    Please refrain from using rt.cpan.org or any other bug reporting
    service. I put the contact address into my modules for a reason.

SEE ALSO
    The JSON and JSON::XS modules that do similar, but human-readable,
    serialisation.

AUTHOR
     Marc Lehmann <schmorp@schmorp.de>
     http://home.schmorp.de/

Revision:	1.2
Committed:	Sat Oct 26 10:41:12 2013 UTC (12 years, 10 months ago) by root
Branch:	MAIN
Changes since 1.1:	+281 -0 lines
Log Message:	* empty log message *
#	User	Rev	Content
1	root	1.2	NAME
2			CBOR::XS - Concise Binary Object Representation (CBOR, RFC7049)
3
4			SYNOPSIS
5			use CBOR::XS;
6
7			$binary_cbor_data = encode_cbor $perl_value;
8			$perl_value = decode_cbor $binary_cbor_data;
9
10			# OO-interface
11
12			$coder = CBOR::XS->new;
13			#TODO
14
15			DESCRIPTION
16			WARNING! THIS IS A PRE-ALPHA RELEASE! IT WILL CRASH, CORRUPT YOUR DATA
17			AND EAT YOUR CHILDREN!
18
19			This module converts Perl data structures to CBOR and vice versa. Its
20			primary goal is to be correct and its secondary goal is to be fast.
21			To reach the latter goal it was written in C.
22
23			See MAPPING, below, on how CBOR::XS maps perl values to CBOR values and
24			vice versa.
25
26			FUNCTIONAL INTERFACE
27			The following convenience methods are provided by this module. They are
28			exported by default:
29
30			$cbor_data = encode_cbor $perl_scalar
31			Converts the given Perl data structure to CBOR representation.
32			Croaks on error.
33
34			$perl_scalar = decode_cbor $cbor_data
35			The opposite of "encode_cbor": expects a valid CBOR string to parse,
36			returning the resulting perl scalar. Croaks on error.
37
38			OBJECT-ORIENTED INTERFACE
39			The object oriented interface lets you configure your own encoding or
40			decoding style, within the limits of supported formats.
41
42			$cbor = new CBOR::XS
43			Creates a new CBOR::XS object that can be used to de/encode CBOR
44			strings. All boolean flags described below are by default
45			disabled.
46
47			The mutators for flags all return the CBOR object again and thus
48			calls can be chained:
49
50			#TODO my $cbor = CBOR::XS->new->encode ({a => [1,2]});
51
52			$cbor = $cbor->max_depth ([$maximum_nesting_depth])
53			$max_depth = $cbor->get_max_depth
54			Sets the maximum nesting level (default 512) accepted while encoding
55			or decoding. If a higher nesting level is detected in CBOR data or a
56			Perl data structure, then the encoder and decoder will stop and
57			croak at that point.
58
59			Nesting level is defined by number of hash- or arrayrefs that the
60			encoder needs to traverse to reach a given point or the number of
61			"{" or "[" characters without their matching closing parenthesis
62			crossed to reach a given character in a string.
63
64			Setting the maximum depth to one disallows any nesting, so that
65			ensures that the object is only a single hash/object or array.
66
67			If no argument is given, the highest possible setting will be used,
68			which is rarely useful.
69
70			Note that nesting is implemented by recursion in C. The default
71			value has been chosen to be as large as typical operating systems
72			allow without crashing.
73
74			See SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS, below, for more info on why this is
75			useful.
76
77			$cbor = $cbor->max_size ([$maximum_string_size])
78			$max_size = $cbor->get_max_size
79			Set the maximum length a CBOR string may have (in bytes) where
80			decoding is being attempted. The default is 0, meaning no limit.
81			When "decode" is called on a string that is longer then this many
82			bytes, it will not attempt to decode the string but throw an
83			exception. This setting has no effect on "encode" (yet).
84
85			If no argument is given, the limit check will be deactivated (same
86			as when 0 is specified).
87
88			See SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS, below, for more info on why this is
89			useful.
90
91			$cbor_data = $cbor->encode ($perl_scalar)
92			Converts the given Perl data structure (a scalar value) to its CBOR
93			representation.
94
95			$perl_scalar = $cbor->decode ($cbor_data)
96			The opposite of "encode": expects CBOR data and tries to parse it,
97			returning the resulting simple scalar or reference. Croaks on error.
98
99			($perl_scalar, $octets) = $cbor->decode_prefix ($cbor_data)
100			This works like the "decode" method, but instead of raising an
101			exception when there is trailing garbage after the CBOR string, it
102			will silently stop parsing there and return the number of characters
103			consumed so far.
104
105			This is useful if your CBOR texts are not delimited by an outer
106			protocol and you need to know where the first CBOR string ends amd
107			the next one starts.
108
109			CBOR::XS->new->decode_prefix ("......")
110			=> ("...", 3)
111
112			MAPPING
113			This section describes how CBOR::XS maps Perl values to CBOR values and
114			vice versa. These mappings are designed to "do the right thing" in most
115			circumstances automatically, preserving round-tripping characteristics
116			(what you put in comes out as something equivalent).
117
118			For the more enlightened: note that in the following descriptions,
119			lowercase perl refers to the Perl interpreter, while uppercase Perl
120			refers to the abstract Perl language itself.
121
122			CBOR -> PERL
123			True, False
124			These CBOR values become "CBOR::XS::true" and "CBOR::XS::false",
125			respectively. They are overloaded to act almost exactly like the
126			numbers 1 and 0. You can check whether a scalar is a CBOR boolean by
127			using the "CBOR::XS::is_bool" function.
128
129			null
130			A CBOR Null value becomes "undef" in Perl.
131
132			PERL -> CBOR
133			The mapping from Perl to CBOR is slightly more difficult, as Perl is a
134			truly typeless language, so we can only guess which CBOR type is meant
135			by a Perl value.
136
137			hash references
138			Perl hash references become CBOR maps. As there is no inherent
139			ordering in hash keys (or CBOR maps), they will usually be encoded
140			in a pseudo-random order.
141
142			array references
143			Perl array references become CBOR arrays.
144
145			other references
146			Other unblessed references are generally not allowed and will cause
147			an exception to be thrown, except for references to the integers 0
148			and 1, which get turned into "False" and "True" in CBOR.
149
150			CBOR::XS::true, CBOR::XS::false
151			These special values become CBOR True and CBOR False values,
152			respectively. You can also use "\1" and "\0" directly if you want.
153
154			blessed objects
155			Blessed objects are not directly representable in CBOR. TODO See the
156			"allow_blessed" and "convert_blessed" methods on various options on
157			how to deal with this: basically, you can choose between throwing an
158			exception, encoding the reference as if it weren't blessed, or
159			provide your own serialiser method.
160
161			simple scalars
162			TODO Simple Perl scalars (any scalar that is not a reference) are
163			the most difficult objects to encode: CBOR::XS will encode undefined
164			scalars as CBOR "Null" values, scalars that have last been used in a
165			string context before encoding as CBOR strings, and anything else as
166			number value:
167
168			# dump as number
169			encode_cbor [2] # yields [2]
170			encode_cbor [-3.0e17] # yields [-3e+17]
171			my $value = 5; encode_cbor [$value] # yields [5]
172
173			# used as string, so dump as string
174			print $value;
175			encode_cbor [$value] # yields ["5"]
176
177			# undef becomes null
178			encode_cbor [undef] # yields [null]
179
180			You can force the type to be a CBOR string by stringifying it:
181
182			my $x = 3.1; # some variable containing a number
183			"$x"; # stringified
184			$x .= ""; # another, more awkward way to stringify
185			print $x; # perl does it for you, too, quite often
186
187			You can force the type to be a CBOR number by numifying it:
188
189			my $x = "3"; # some variable containing a string
190			$x += 0; # numify it, ensuring it will be dumped as a number
191			$x *= 1; # same thing, the choice is yours.
192
193			You can not currently force the type in other, less obscure, ways.
194			Tell me if you need this capability (but don't forget to explain why
195			it's needed :).
196
197			Note that numerical precision has the same meaning as under Perl (so
198			binary to decimal conversion follows the same rules as in Perl,
199			which can differ to other languages). Also, your perl interpreter
200			might expose extensions to the floating point numbers of your
201			platform, such as infinities or NaN's - these cannot be represented
202			in CBOR, and it is an error to pass those in.
203
204			CBOR and JSON
205			TODO
206
207			SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS
208			When you are using CBOR in a protocol, talking to untrusted potentially
209			hostile creatures requires relatively few measures.
210
211			First of all, your CBOR decoder should be secure, that is, should not
212			have any buffer overflows. Obviously, this module should ensure that and
213			I am trying hard on making that true, but you never know.
214
215			Second, you need to avoid resource-starving attacks. That means you
216			should limit the size of CBOR data you accept, or make sure then when
217			your resources run out, that's just fine (e.g. by using a separate
218			process that can crash safely). The size of a CBOR string in octets is
219			usually a good indication of the size of the resources required to
220			decode it into a Perl structure. While CBOR::XS can check the size of
221			the CBOR text, it might be too late when you already have it in memory,
222			so you might want to check the size before you accept the string.
223
224			Third, CBOR::XS recurses using the C stack when decoding objects and
225			arrays. The C stack is a limited resource: for instance, on my amd64
226			machine with 8MB of stack size I can decode around 180k nested arrays
227			but only 14k nested CBOR objects (due to perl itself recursing deeply on
228			croak to free the temporary). If that is exceeded, the program crashes.
229			To be conservative, the default nesting limit is set to 512. If your
230			process has a smaller stack, you should adjust this setting accordingly
231			with the "max_depth" method.
232
233			Something else could bomb you, too, that I forgot to think of. In that
234			case, you get to keep the pieces. I am always open for hints, though...
235
236			Also keep in mind that CBOR::XS might leak contents of your Perl data
237			structures in its error messages, so when you serialise sensitive
238			information you might want to make sure that exceptions thrown by
239			CBOR::XS will not end up in front of untrusted eyes.
240
241			CBOR IMPLEMENTATION NOTES
242			This section contains some random implementation notes. They do not
243			describe guaranteed behaviour, but merely behaviour as-is implemented
244			right now.
245
246			64 bit integers are only properly decoded when Perl was built with 64
247			bit support.
248
249			Strings and arrays are encoded with a definite length. Hashes as well,
250			unless they are tied (or otherwise magical).
251
252			Only the double data type is supported for NV data types - when Perl
253			uses long double to represent floating point values, they might not be
254			encoded properly. Half precision types are accepted, but not encoded.
255
256			Strict mode and canonical mode are not implemented.
257
258			THREADS
259			This module is not guaranteed to be thread safe and there are no plans
260			to change this until Perl gets thread support (as opposed to the
261			horribly slow so-called "threads" which are simply slow and bloated
262			process simulations - use fork, it's much faster, cheaper, better).
263
264			(It might actually work, but you have been warned).
265
266			BUGS
267			While the goal of this module is to be correct, that unfortunately does
268			not mean it's bug-free, only that I think its design is bug-free. If you
269			keep reporting bugs they will be fixed swiftly, though.
270
271			Please refrain from using rt.cpan.org or any other bug reporting
272			service. I put the contact address into my modules for a reason.
273
274			SEE ALSO
275			The JSON and JSON::XS modules that do similar, but human-readable,
276			serialisation.
277
278			AUTHOR
279			Marc Lehmann <schmorp@schmorp.de>
280			http://home.schmorp.de/
281