Binary JData for Python - a lightweight binary JSON format

• Copyright: (C) Qianqian Fang (2020-2026) <q.fang at neu.edu>
• Copyright: (C) Iotic Labs Ltd. (2016-2019) <vilnis.termanis at iotic-labs.com>
• License: Apache License, Version 2.0
• Version: 0.6.6
• URL: https://pypi.org/project/bjdata/
• Github: https://github.com/NeuroJSON/pybj
• BJData Spec Version: Draft 4
• Acknowledgement: This project is supported by US National Institute of Health (NIH) grant U24-NS124027

This is a Python v3.2+ (and 2.7+) Binary JData encoder and decoder based on the Draft-4 specification.

Installing / packaging

## To get from PyPI
pip3 install bjdata

Other instalation options

## Installing / packaging

## To get from PyPI without root/administrator privilege
pip3 install bjdata --user

## To get from PyPI via python
python3 -mpip install bjdata

## To only build extension modules in-place (e.g. in repository)
python3 setup.py build_ext -i

## To build & install globally
python3 setup.py install

## To skip building of extensions when installing (or building)
PYBJDATA_NO_EXTENSION=1 python3 setup.py install

This package can be directly installed on Debian Bullseye/Ubuntu 21.04 or newer via

sudo apt-get install python3-bjdata

Both python-bjdata (for Python 2.7+) and python3-bjdata (for Python 3.x) can also be installed on Ubuntu via

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:fangq/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install python-bjdata python3-bjdata

Notes

• The extension module is not required but provide a significant speed boost.
• The above can also be run with v2.7+ (replacing pip3 and python3 above by pip and python, respectively)
• At run time, one can check whether compiled version is in use via the bjdata.EXTENSION_ENABLED boolean

Usage

It's meant to behave very much like Python's built-in JSON module, e.g.:

import bjdata as bj

obj={'a':123,'b':12.3,'c':[1,2,3,[4,5],'test']}
encoded = bj.dumpb(obj)
decoded = bj.loadb(encoded)

Note: Only unicode strings in Python 2 will be encoded as strings, plain str will be encoded as a byte array.

Documentation

import bjdata as bj
help(bj.dump)
help(bj.load)
help(bj.encoder.dump)
help(bj.decoder.load)

Command-line utility

This converts between JSON and BJData formats:

python3 -mbjdata
USAGE: bjdata (fromjson|tojson) (INFILE|-) [OUTFILE]

EXAMPLES:

python3 -mbjdata fromjson input.json output.bjd
python3 -mbjdata tojson   input.bjd  output.json

Tests

Static

This library has been checked using flake8 and pylint, using a modified configuration - see pylint.rc and flake8.cfg.

Unit

python3 -mvenv py
. py/bin/activate
pip install -U pip setuptools
pip install -e .[dev]

./coverage_test.sh

Note: See coverage_test.sh for additional requirements.

Limitations

• The No-Op type is only supported by the decoder. (This should arguably be a protocol-level rather than serialisation-level option.) Specifically, it is only allowed to occur at the start or between elements of a container and only inside un-typed containers. (In a typed container it is impossible to tell the difference between an encoded element and a No-Op.)
• Strongly-typed containers are only supported by the decoder (apart from for bytes/bytearray) and not for No-Op.
• Encoder/decoder extensions are not supported at this time.
• Encoder/decoder only support numpy NDarrays and scalars, other numpy types are not supported.

Acknowledgement

This package was modified based on the py-ubjson package developed by Iotic Labs Ltd. Project URL: https://github.com/Iotic-Labs/py-ubjson

The major changes were focused on supporting the Binary JData Specification Draft 4 - an extended Universal Binary JSON (UBJSON) Specification Draft-12 by adding the below new features:

• BJData adds 5 new data types: uint16 [u], uint32 [m], uint64 [M], float16 [h], and byte [B]
• BJData adds a dedicated byte data type used in optimized array containers for binary data
• BJData supports an optimized ND array container
• BJData does not convert NaN/Inf/-Inf to null
• BJData uses little-Endian as the default integer/floating-point numbers while UBJSON uses big-Endian
• BJData only permits non-zero-fixed-length data types (UiuImlMLhdDCB) in strongly-typed array/object containers
• BJData Draft-4 adds new optimized container Stucture-of-Arrays (SoA) for packed objects.