CBOR Serialization Format

The cluster centers on discussions of CBOR as a compact binary alternative to JSON for data serialization, frequently comparing it to MessagePack, highlighting its IETF standardization, features like tags, and adoption over other formats.

🚀 Rising 3.0x Open Source
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#4834
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Keywords

SEE IT e.g MsgPack BSON WebTransport URI IETF HN BER cbor json binary rfc protocol types tags data serialization maps

Sample Comments

keithnz Dec 2, 2025 View on HN

CBOR is a pretty good middle ground

ludocode Apr 8, 2017 View on HN

No, CBOR should not replace MessagePack. The CBOR spec was written without the participation of the MessagePack community or the consent of its creator. CBOR added a number of questionable and unpopular features that lacked community consensus such as variable-length arrays and maps, or prefix tags for an arbitrary list of semantic types (URI, mimetype, base64, etc.) It also proposes various levels of strictness and canonicalization such as key sorting of maps based on binary representation. All

js8 Jul 25, 2025 View on HN

Why not use a saner protocol than JSON, e.g. CBOR?

legulere Oct 23, 2021 View on HN

You mean like CBOR?https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CBOR

f549abd01 Aug 19, 2024 View on HN

Sounds cool. How does it differ from CBOR?

gumby Sep 13, 2020 View on HN

Lot of json packages support CBOR

cryptonector Jan 11, 2025 View on HN

We already have CBOR and other binary JSONs.

eyan Apr 22, 2016 View on HN

Surprised nobody mentioned CBOR (http://cbor.io) yet. Aka RFC 7049 (http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7049).

pantalaimon Dec 26, 2021 View on HN

I'd rather use CBOR instead of JSON when doing anything outside the browser that doesn't need to be human editable

dang Jul 30, 2025 View on HN

Related. Others?Begrudgingly Choosing CBOR over MessagePack - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43229259 - March 2025 (78 comments)MessagePack vs. CBOR (RFC7049) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23838565 - July 2020 (2 comments)CBOR – Concise Binary Object Representation - <a href