How different is CBOR compared to BSON? Both seem to be binary json-like represe...

EdSchouten · 2025-07-30T12:47:16 1753879636

That's not entirely true: with CBOR you can add custom data types through custom tags. A central registry of them is here:

https://www.iana.org/assignments/cbor-tags/cbor-tags.xhtml

This is, for example, used by IPLD (https://ipld.io) to express references between objects through native types (https://github.com/ipld/cid-cbor/).

maxbond · 2025-07-30T14:19:04 1753885144

I think parsing BSON is simpler than parsing JSON, BSON has additional types but the top level is always a document. Whereas the following are all valid JSON:

- `null`

- `"hello"`

- `[1,2,NaN]`

Additionally, BSON will just tell you what the type of a field is. JSON requires inferring it.

zokier · 2025-07-30T21:45:45 1753911945

NaN is not part of JSON by any spec. Top level scalar values were disallowed by RFC 4627.

maxbond · 2025-07-30T22:47:26 1753915646

Fair enough. I'm not sure how much JSON parsers in the wild care about that spec. I just tried with Python and it was happy to accept scalars and NaN. JavaScript rejected NaN but was happy to accept a scalar. But sure, compliant parsers can disregard those cases.