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CBOR Format

Description​

CBOR (Concise Binary Object Representation) is a binary data format inspired by JSON. It's designed to be more compact and efficient than JSON while maintaining similar data structures. CBOR is an IETF standard (RFC 7049).

File Extensions​

  • .cbor - CBOR files

Implementation Details​

Reading​

The CBOR implementation:

  • Uses cbor2 for decoding (pip install iterabledata[cbor])
  • Supports reading single objects or arrays
  • Converts CBOR data to Python objects
  • Handles nested structures

Writing​

Writing support:

  • Encodes Python objects to CBOR format
  • Writes binary CBOR data
  • Supports nested structures

Key Features​

  • Binary format: More compact than JSON
  • JSON-like: Similar data structures to JSON
  • Nested data: Supports complex nested structures
  • Type preservation: Maintains data types
  • Standard format: IETF standard (RFC 7049)

Usage​

from iterable import open_iterable

# Basic reading
with open_iterable('data.cbor') as source:
    for row in source:
        print(row)

# Writing
with open_iterable('output.cbor', mode='w') as dest:
    dest.write({'name': 'John', 'age': 30})

Parameters​

No specific parameters required.

Limitations​

  1. CBOR extra: Requires pip install iterabledata[cbor] (cbor2)
  2. Binary format: Not human-readable
  3. File structure: Expects single object or array of objects
  4. Memory usage: Entire file may be loaded into memory

Compression Support​

CBOR files can be compressed with all supported codecs:

  • GZip (.cbor.gz)
  • BZip2 (.cbor.bz2)
  • LZMA (.cbor.xz)
  • LZ4 (.cbor.lz4)
  • ZIP (.cbor.zip)
  • Brotli (.cbor.br)
  • ZStandard (.cbor.zst)

Use Cases​

  • IoT devices: Efficient data exchange for IoT
  • APIs: Compact API responses
  • Data storage: Efficient binary storage
  • Embedded systems: Resource-constrained environments

Error Handling​

  • Missing dependency: optional libraries raise ImportError with an install hint (pip install 'iterabledata[<extra>]' when an extra exists).
  • Write mode: read-only formats raise WriteNotSupportedError or ValueError when opened with mode="w".
  • Bad or unsupported input: may raise ValueError, OSError, or library-specific errors.
  • See Troubleshooting for decoding, detection, and engine issues.