CBOR Format
CBOR (Concise Binary Object Representation, RFC 8949) is the IETF-standardized binary alternative to JSON, supporting extension tags and deterministic encoding.
Purpose
It provides a standardized, extensible, compact data representation for IoT, CoAP, and WebAuthn.
Mechanism
Each item starts with a 3-bit major type plus 5-bit additional information, and the major type determines what follows: unsigned/negative int, byte/string, array/map, tag, or simple/float. The tag mechanism supports extensions such as dates, URLs, and bignums.
Use cases
- CoAP IoT protocol
- WebAuthn assertions
- Deterministic encoding for signatures