CBOR/MessagePack from uint8_t * and size

[pboettch]

How would one use from_cbor/from_messagepack when data is stored in a uint8_t-buffer received via a low-level C library?

Could something be done in this library to support this without doing copy of the data into a vector?

[theodelrieu]

I think those methods should behave like parse, to be more generic indeed

[pboettch]

At a first look I thought that simply replacing the vector as argument and giving a uint8_t *and a size_t could work with the existing functions. On a second glance, I think this needs to be tried ;-) .

[nlohmann]

I have a question regarding this issue.

For the default JSON parser, we currently have a lot of overloads:

• T (&array)[N]
• const CharT (CharT is a pointer to a 1-byte integral type)
• std::istream& and std::istream&&
• IteratorType first, IteratorType last
• const ContiguousContainer& (container with contiguous storage of 1-byte values)

Internally, this is realized with an input adapter class, see https:/nlohmann/json/blob/develop/src/json.hpp#L8708.

When I now add these overloads to the CBOR and MessagePack parsers, this would mean 8 additional functions which are more or less the same, because each chooses one of the input adapters, which is then used to configure a binary reader (https:/nlohmann/json/blob/develop/src/json.hpp#L8954) which takes care of the acutal parsing.

Before I start copying/pasting, I was wondering if there was a more elegant solution. A first idea would be to implement some kind of

template<class ... Types>
static basic_json from_cbor(Types ... args)

which then forwards args to the constructors of the input_adapter class and basically allowing to read CBOR from anything that can create an input adapter.

This would have the advantage of only two functions (one for CBOR and one for MessagePack), but would have the disadvantage of being a bit obscure for the users of the library, because they cannot immediately recognize which arguments can be used. Of course, this could be tackled by extensive documentation, but still.

Another disadvantage of this approach is the fact that it cannot be used to limit the number of parse overloads, because these all have a const parser_callback_t cb = nullptr as last parameter which cannot follow a parameter pack.

Anyway, what are your thoughts about this?

[Type1J]

I'm not sure what the status of it is, but std::array_view is proposed. I think that this is a task well suited to it.

[nlohmann]

std::array_view is not part of C++11, so unfortunately it won't be applicable to this library for a while.

[nlohmann]

Opened #623 as place to discuss the structure of the parsing functions.

[nlohmann]

Function

static basic_json from_cbor(detail::input_adapter i)
{
    return binary_reader(i).parse_cbor();
}

now allows to read CBOR (and similarly, MessagePack) to a lot of types from which an input_adapter can be constructed. This includes a uint8_t */size_t pair.

For a std::vector<uint8_t> packed, the call is

json::from_cbor({packed.data(), packed.size()}

(Note the braces around the pair.)

[pboettch]

Great. And no copy of the buffer. Thanks. Can't wait for a release ;-) .