Overview

Though JSON is a ubiquitous data format, it is not a very compact format suitable for data exchange, for instance over a network. Hence, the library supports

• BSON (Binary JSON),
• CBOR (Concise Binary Object Representation),
• MessagePack, and
• UBJSON (Universal Binary JSON Specification)

to efficiently encode JSON values to byte vectors and to decode such vectors.

Comparison

Completeness

Format	Serialization	Deserialization
BSON	incomplete: top-level value must be an object	incomplete, but all JSON types are supported
CBOR	complete	incomplete, but all JSON types are supported
MessagePack	complete	complete
UBJSON	complete	complete

Binary values

Format	Binary values	Binary subtypes
BSON	supported	supported
CBOR	supported	not supported
MessagePack	supported	supported
UBJSON	not supported	not supported

Sizes

Format	canada.json	twitter.json	citm_catalog.json	jeopardy.json
BSON	85,8 %	95,2 %	95,8 %	106,7 %
CBOR	50,5 %	86,3 %	68,4 %	88,0 %
MessagePack	50,6 %	86,0 %	68,5 %	87,9 %
UBJSON	53,2 %	91,3 %	78,2 %	96,6 %
UBJSON (size)	58,6 %	92,3 %	86,8 %	97,4 %
UBJSON (size+type)	55,9 %	92,3 %	85,0 %	95,0 %