cbort#

Native CBOR codec with type-safe combinators for OCaml.

Overview#

cbort provides type-safe CBOR (RFC 8949) encoding and decoding using a combinator-based approach. Define codecs once and use them for both encoding and decoding OCaml values to and from CBOR binary format.

Features#

• Type-safe codecs: Define encoding/decoding rules once, use them bidirectionally
• Combinator-based API: Compose complex codecs from simple building blocks
• RFC 8949 compliant: Full support for CBOR data model including tags, maps, arrays, and all numeric types
• Arbitrary precision integers: Uses Zarith for unlimited integer range
• Detailed error reporting: Path-aware error messages for debugging decode failures
• Zero-copy streaming: Built on bytesrw for efficient I/O

Installation#

opam install cbort

Usage#

open Cbort

(* Define a codec for a record type *)
type person = { name : string; age : int }

let person_codec =
  let open Obj in
  let* name = mem "name" (fun p -> p.name) string in
  let* age = mem "age" (fun p -> p.age) int in
  return { name; age }
  |> finish

(* Encode to CBOR bytes *)
let encoded = encode_string person_codec { name = "Alice"; age = 30 }

(* Decode from CBOR bytes *)
let decoded = decode_string person_codec encoded

Documentation#

API documentation is available at the project homepage.

Licence#

ISC License. See LICENSE.md for details.