]> External References to Values in CBOR Diagnostic Notation (EDN) Universität Bremen TZI
Postfach 330440 Bremen D-28359 Germany +49-421-218-63921 cabo@tzi.org
CBOR numbers The Concise Binary Object Representation (CBOR, RFC 8949) is a data format whose design goals include the possibility of extremely small code size, fairly small message size, and extensibility without the need for version negotiation. CBOR diagnostic notation (EDN) is widely used to represent CBOR data items in a way that is accessible to humans, for instance for examples in a specification. At the time of writing, EDN did not provide mechanisms for composition of such examples from multiple components or sources. This document uses EDN application extensions to provide two such mechanisms, both of which insert an imported data item into the data item being described in EDN: The e'' application extension provides a way to import data items, particularly constant values, from a CDDL model (which itself has ways to provide composition). The ref'' application extension provides a way to import data items that are described in EDN.
Introduction (Please see abstract.) See for a more general discussion of working with assigned numbers during development of a specification.
The e'' application extension: importing from CDDL
Problem In diagnostic notation examples used during development of earlier drafts, authors often used text strings in place of constants they need, even though they actually mean a placeholder for a later, to-be-registered integer. One example from a recent draft would be:
Misleading usage of text strings as stand-in for registered constants
Not only is the reader misled by seeing text strings in places that are actually intended to be small integers, there are also small integers that are not explained at all (here: 10, 5). The usefulness of this example is greatly reduced. Examples constructed in this are not actually machine-readable -- they seem to be, but they mean the wrong thing in several places without any warning that this is so.
Solution In many cases, the constants needed to clean up this example are already available in a CDDL model, or could be easily made available in this way. If such a CDDL model can be identified, the EDN application extension e'constant-name' can be used to reference a constant defined by that model under the name constant-name. (Hint: memorize the e as external constant, or enum.) For the example in , such a CDDL model could have at least the content shown in :
CDDL model defining constants for e''
Note that such a model can have other, unrelated CDDL rules that define more complex data items; only the ones used in an e'' construct need to be constant values. Using the CDDL model in , the example in can be notated as:
Example updated to use e'constantname' for registered constants
This example is equivalent to notating {33: true, 34: 10, 31: 5}, which expresses the concise 10-byte data item that will actually be interchanged for this example. Note that the application-oriented literal does not itself define where the CDDL definitions it uses come from. This information needs to come from the context of the example.
Implementation The e'' application extension is now implemented in the cbor-diag tools , by the cbor-diag-e gem , which can be installed as: (cbor-diag-e uses cddlc internally, so it must be in PATH.) The provided Use of this extension has two prerequisites:
  1. Opt-in to the application extension e, which in the cbor-diag tools such as diag2x.rb is done using the -a command line flag, here: -ae.
  2. Identification of the CDDL model to be used, which will give the actual values for the constants. This can be a complete CDDL model for the application, no need to limit it just to constant definitions. (Where the constant values need to be obtained by registration at the time of completion of the document using the examples, the CDDL model can be set up with TBD values of the constants to be assigned, and once they are, the necessary updates are all in one place.)
Assuming that the example in is in a file called gmadmin.diag, and that the CDDL model that includes the constants defined in is in gmadmin.cddl, the following commands can be used to translate the e'` constants into their actual values:
Provisional use The need for this application is there now, while ratification of the present specification might take a year or so. Until then, each document using this scheme can simply use boilerplate such as:
In the CBOR diagnostic notation used in this document, constructs of the form e’somename' are replaced by the value assigned to somename in CDDL in figure 0815. E.g., {e'group_mode': "bar"} stands for {33: "bar"}.
(Choose 0815, group_mode and 33 along the lines of the figure you include with the CDDL definitions needed.)
The ref'' application extension: importing from EDN
Problem Examples using CBOR diagnostic notation can get large. One way to manage the size of an example is to make it incomplete. This reduces the usefulness of the example for machine-processing. It can also be misleading, unless the elision is made explicit (see ).
Solution In a set of CBOR examples, recurring subtrees can often be identified, the details of which do not need to be repeated in each example. By enabling examples to reference these subtrees from a separate piece of EDN, each example can focus on what is specific for them. The ref'' application-oriented literal enables composition by standing for a CBOR data item from a separate EDN instance that is referenced using its text as an identifier. So, for example, if 123.diag is a file containing the result of the EDN is The text of the literal can be one of two kinds of identifiers:
  1. a file name to be interpreted in the context of the referencing example, as shown above, or
  2. a URI that references the EDN to be embedded, as in
Note that a ref'' application-oriented literal can only be used for a single CBOR data item; the extension point provided by EDN does not work for splicing in CBOR sequences.
Implementation The ref'' application extension is now implemented in the cbor-diag tools , by the cbor-diag-ref gem, which can be installed as: For using the application extension, the cbor-diag tools such as diag2x.rb need to be informed by the -a command line flag, here: -aref. For experimenting with the implementation, the web resource http://tzi.de/~cabo/123.diag contains [1, 2, 3]. This example enables usage as in: my.diag $ diag2diag.rb -aref my.diag [4711.0, true, [1, 2, 3]] $ echo "[4, 5, 6]" >456.diag $ echo "[4711.0, true, ref'456.diag']" >my.diag $ diag2diag.rb -aref my.diag [4711.0, true, [4, 5, 6]] ]]> If a referenced EDN file parses as a CBOR sequence this is currently treated as an error.
Provisional use Documents that want to use the application extension ref'' now can use boilerplate similar to that given above for e''.
IANA Considerations IANA is requested to make the following two assignments in the CBOR Diagnostic Notation Application-extension Identifiers registry [IANA.cbor-diagnostic-notation]: Additions to Application-extension Identifier Registry
Application-extension Identifier Description
e import value from external CDDL
ref import value from external EDN
All entries the Change Controller "IETF" and the Reference "RFC-XXXX". RFC Editor: please replace RFC-XXXX with the RFC number of this RFC, [IANA.cbor-diagnostic-notation] with a reference to the new registry group, and remove this note.
Security considerations The security considerations of , , and apply. The proof of concept implementations described do not do any sanitizing of URLs or file names at all. Upcoming versions of the present document will need to define the right restrictions for external references like this.
References Normative References Concise Binary Object Representation (CBOR) The Concise Binary Object Representation (CBOR) is a data format whose design goals include the possibility of extremely small code size, fairly small message size, and extensibility without the need for version negotiation. These design goals make it different from earlier binary serializations such as ASN.1 and MessagePack. This document obsoletes RFC 7049, providing editorial improvements, new details, and errata fixes while keeping full compatibility with the interchange format of RFC 7049. It does not create a new version of the format. Concise Data Definition Language (CDDL): A Notational Convention to Express Concise Binary Object Representation (CBOR) and JSON Data Structures This document proposes a notational convention to express Concise Binary Object Representation (CBOR) data structures (RFC 7049). Its main goal is to provide an easy and unambiguous way to express structures for protocol messages and data formats that use CBOR or JSON. CBOR Extended Diagnostic Notation (EDN): Application-Oriented Literals, ABNF, and Media Type Universität Bremen TZI The Concise Binary Object Representation, CBOR (STD 94, RFC 8949), defines a "diagnostic notation" in order to be able to converse about CBOR data items without having to resort to binary data. This document specifies how to add application-oriented extensions to the diagnostic notation. It then defines two such extensions for text representations of epoch-based date/times and of IP addresses and prefixes (RFC 9164). A few further additions close some gaps in usability. To facilitate tool interoperation, this document specifies a formal ABNF definition for extended diagnostic notation (EDN) that accommodates application- oriented literals. Informative References Managing CBOR numbers in Internet-Drafts Universität Bremen TZI CBOR-based protocols often make use of numbers allocated in a registry. While developing the protocols, those numbers may not yet be available. This impedes the generation of data models and examples that actually can be used by tools. This short draft proposes a common way to handle these situations, without any changes to existing tools. Such changes are very well possible in the future, at which time this draft will be updated. CDDL conversion utilities n.d. CBOR diagnostic utilities n.d. CBOR diagnostic extension e'' n.d. CBOR diagnostic extension ref'' n.d. The "dereferenceable identifier" pattern Universität Bremen TZI In a protocol or an application environment, it is often important to be able to create unambiguous identifiers for some meaning (concept or some entity). Due to the simplicity of creating URIs, these have become popular for this purpose. Beyond the purpose of identifiers to be uniquely associated with a meaning, some of these URIs are in principle _dereferenceable_, so something can be placed that can be retrieved when encountering such a URI. // The present -01 version is a stub to draw some attention to the // opportunity that this pattern would benefit from a common // description, documenting its benefits and pitfalls, and some // mitigations for the latter.
Acknowledgements TBD