docs: byte layout sections, glossary entries, and QA page update (#5910)

* docs: byte layout sections, glossary, and QA page updates

- Move "Byte layout" of each binary format to its own section before
  "Serialization" and describe the idea of the format.
- Glossary: add LLDB and other terms used throughout the documentation.
- quality_assurance: correct Clang Static Analyzer and CMake entries; add
  CodeQL, Semgrep, Flawfinder, CIFuzz, OpenSSF Scorecard, REUSE, Meson/SwiftPM,
  and reproducibility checks.

Signed-off-by: Niels Lohmann <mail@nlohmann.me>

* docs: drop unused length colour from CBOR and MessagePack byte layout legends

Signed-off-by: Niels Lohmann <mail@nlohmann.me>

---------

Signed-off-by: Niels Lohmann <mail@nlohmann.me>
This commit is contained in:
Niels Lohmann authored and GitHub committed 2026-10-25 12:08:14 +01:00
1 parent 330fbead59
commit 1cf5492bcd
8 files changed
+252 -216

No files matched your search

@@ -9,6 +9,39 @@ extra byte in addition to the strings themselves.
- [MessagePack website](https://msgpack.org)
- [MessagePack specification](https://github.com/msgpack/msgpack/blob/master/spec.md)
## Byte layout
MessagePack encodes each value as a one-byte *format marker*, optionally followed by a length or the payload. The marker range is partitioned to keep common values small: small non-negative integers (0 to 127) and small negative integers (-32 to -1) are the marker byte itself; short strings, arrays, and maps (up to 31 or 15 elements) hide their length in the marker's lower bits. Larger values use dedicated markers that announce the width (8, 16, 32, or 64 bits) of the length or number that follows, in big-endian byte order. Like CBOR, containers are length-prefixed, so no terminator is needed.
Consider the following JSON value (shown formatted for readability):
```json
{
"id": 300,
"name": "json",
"pi": 3.14,
"tags": [
"a",
"b"
]
}
```
`to_msgpack` encodes it to 39 bytes (shown in hexadecimal; the encoding contains no whitespace). The colors mark the role of each byte: <span class="bl bl-t">type/marker</span> <span class="bl bl-d">data</span>.
<div class="byte-layout" markdown="0"><table>
<thead><tr><th>JSON</th><th>Bytes</th><th>Meaning</th></tr></thead><tbody>
<tr><td><code>{</code></td><td><span class="bl bl-t">84</span></td><td>map with 4 key/value pairs</td></tr>
<tr><td><code>&quot;id&quot;: 300,</code></td><td><span class="bl bl-t">A2</span> <span class="bl bl-d">69 64</span> <span class="bl bl-t">CD</span> <span class="bl bl-d">01 2C</span></td><td>key: fixstr of length 2, then its UTF-8 bytes; value: uint 16 (big-endian)</td></tr>
<tr><td><code>&quot;name&quot;: &quot;json&quot;,</code></td><td><span class="bl bl-t">A4</span> <span class="bl bl-d">6E 61 6D 65</span> <span class="bl bl-t">A4</span> <span class="bl bl-d">6A 73 6F 6E</span></td><td>key: fixstr of length 4; value: fixstr of length 4</td></tr>
<tr><td><code>&quot;pi&quot;: 3.14,</code></td><td><span class="bl bl-t">A2</span> <span class="bl bl-d">70 69</span> <span class="bl bl-t">CB</span> <span class="bl bl-d">40 09 1E B8 51 EB 85 1F</span></td><td>key: fixstr of length 2; value: float 64 (IEEE 754, big-endian)</td></tr>
<tr><td><code>&quot;tags&quot;: [</code></td><td><span class="bl bl-t">A4</span> <span class="bl bl-d">74 61 67 73</span> <span class="bl bl-t">92</span></td><td>key: fixstr of length 4; value: fixarray with 2 elements</td></tr>
<tr><td><code>&quot;a&quot;,</code></td><td><span class="bl bl-t">A1</span> <span class="bl bl-d">61</span></td><td>fixstr of length 1</td></tr>
<tr><td><code>&quot;b&quot;</code></td><td><span class="bl bl-t">A1</span> <span class="bl bl-d">62</span></td><td>fixstr of length 1</td></tr>
<tr><td><code>]</code></td><td></td><td>no end marker: the element count was given up front</td></tr>
<tr><td><code>}</code></td><td></td><td>no end marker: the member count was given up front</td></tr>
</tbody></table></div>
## Serialization
The library uses the following mapping from JSON values types to MessagePack types according to the MessagePack
@@ -91,41 +124,6 @@ specification:
--8<-- "examples/to_msgpack.output"
```
### Byte layout
Consider the following JSON value (shown formatted for readability):
```json
{
"id": 300,
"name": "json",
"pi": 3.14,
"tags": [
"a",
"b"
]
}
```
`to_msgpack` encodes it to 39 bytes (shown in hexadecimal; the encoding contains no whitespace). The colors mark the role of each byte: <span class="bl bl-t">type/marker</span> <span class="bl bl-l">length/count/size</span> <span class="bl bl-d">data</span>.
<div class="byte-layout" markdown="0"><table>
<thead><tr><th>JSON</th><th>Bytes</th><th>Meaning</th></tr></thead><tbody>
<tr><td><code>{</code></td><td><span class="bl bl-t">84</span></td><td>map with 4 key/value pairs</td></tr>
<tr><td><code>&quot;id&quot;: 300,</code></td><td><span class="bl bl-t">A2</span> <span class="bl bl-d">69 64</span> <span class="bl bl-t">CD</span> <span class="bl bl-d">01 2C</span></td><td>key: fixstr of length 2, then its UTF-8 bytes; value: uint 16 (big-endian)</td></tr>
<tr><td><code>&quot;name&quot;: &quot;json&quot;,</code></td><td><span class="bl bl-t">A4</span> <span class="bl bl-d">6E 61 6D 65</span> <span class="bl bl-t">A4</span> <span class="bl bl-d">6A 73 6F 6E</span></td><td>key: fixstr of length 4; value: fixstr of length 4</td></tr>
<tr><td><code>&quot;pi&quot;: 3.14,</code></td><td><span class="bl bl-t">A2</span> <span class="bl bl-d">70 69</span> <span class="bl bl-t">CB</span> <span class="bl bl-d">40 09 1E B8 51 EB 85 1F</span></td><td>key: fixstr of length 2; value: float 64 (IEEE 754, big-endian)</td></tr>
<tr><td><code>&quot;tags&quot;: [</code></td><td><span class="bl bl-t">A4</span> <span class="bl bl-d">74 61 67 73</span> <span class="bl bl-t">92</span></td><td>key: fixstr of length 4; value: fixarray with 2 elements</td></tr>
<tr><td><code>&quot;a&quot;,</code></td><td><span class="bl bl-t">A1</span> <span class="bl bl-d">61</span></td><td>fixstr of length 1</td></tr>
<tr><td><code>&quot;b&quot;</code></td><td><span class="bl bl-t">A1</span> <span class="bl bl-d">62</span></td><td>fixstr of length 1</td></tr>
<tr><td><code>]</code></td><td></td><td>no end marker: the element count was given up front</td></tr>
<tr><td><code>}</code></td><td></td><td>no end marker: the member count was given up front</td></tr>
</tbody></table></div>
## Deserialization
The library maps MessagePack types to JSON value types as follows: