BSON () is a

computer A computer is a machine that can be programmed to Execution (computing), carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations (computation) automatically. Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as C ...

data interchange format. The name "BSON" is based on the term

JSON JSON (JavaScript Object Notation, pronounced ; also ) is an open standard file format and data interchange format that uses human-readable text to store and transmit data objects consisting of attribute–value pairs and arrays (or other ser ...

and stands for "Binary JSON". It is a binary form for representing simple or complex

data structure In computer science, a data structure is a data organization, management, and storage format that is usually chosen for efficient access to data. More precisely, a data structure is a collection of data values, the relationships among them, a ...

s including

associative array In computer science, an associative array, map, symbol table, or dictionary is an abstract data type that stores a collection of (key, value) pairs, such that each possible key appears at most once in the collection. In mathematical terms an as ...

s (also known as name-value pairs), integer indexed arrays, and a suite of fundamental scalar types. BSON originated in 2009 at

MongoDB MongoDB is a source-available cross-platform document-oriented database program. Classified as a NoSQL database program, MongoDB uses JSON-like documents with optional schemas. MongoDB is developed by MongoDB Inc. and licensed under the Serve ...

. Several scalar data types are of specific interest to MongoDB and the format is used both as a data storage and network transfer format for the MongoDB database, but it can be used independently outside of MongoDB. Implementations are available in a variety of languages such as C,

C++ C++ (pronounced "C plus plus") is a high-level general-purpose programming language created by Danish computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup as an extension of the C programming language, or "C with Classes". The language has expanded significan ...

, C#, D,

Delphi Delphi (; ), in legend previously called Pytho (Πυθώ), in ancient times was a sacred precinct that served as the seat of Pythia, the major oracle who was consulted about important decisions throughout the ancient classical world. The oracle ...

, Erlang, Go,

Haskell Haskell () is a general-purpose, statically-typed, purely functional programming language with type inference and lazy evaluation. Designed for teaching, research and industrial applications, Haskell has pioneered a number of programming lang ...

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's List ...

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of Website, websites use JavaScript on the Client (computing), client side ...

Julia Julia is usually a feminine given name. It is a Latinate feminine form of the name Julio and Julius. (For further details on etymology, see the Wiktionary entry "Julius".) The given name ''Julia'' had been in use throughout Late Antiquity (e.g. ...

Lua Lua or LUA may refer to: Science and technology * Lua (programming language) * Latvia University of Agriculture * Last universal ancestor, in evolution Ethnicity and language * Lua people, of Laos * Lawa people, of Thailand sometimes referred t ...

OCaml OCaml ( , formerly Objective Caml) is a general-purpose programming language, general-purpose, multi-paradigm programming language which extends the Caml dialect of ML (programming language), ML with object-oriented programming, object-oriented ...

Perl Perl is a family of two high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming languages. "Perl" refers to Perl 5, but from 2000 to 2019 it also referred to its redesigned "sister language", Perl 6, before the latter's name was offici ...

PHP PHP is a general-purpose scripting language geared toward web development. It was originally created by Danish-Canadian programmer Rasmus Lerdorf in 1993 and released in 1995. The PHP reference implementation is now produced by The PHP Group ...

Python Python may refer to: Snakes * Pythonidae, a family of nonvenomous snakes found in Africa, Asia, and Australia ** ''Python'' (genus), a genus of Pythonidae found in Africa and Asia * Python (mythology), a mythical serpent Computing * Python (pro ...

Ruby A ruby is a pinkish red to blood-red colored gemstone, a variety of the mineral corundum ( aluminium oxide). Ruby is one of the most popular traditional jewelry gems and is very durable. Other varieties of gem-quality corundum are called sa ...

Rust Rust is an iron oxide, a usually reddish-brown oxide formed by the reaction of iron and oxygen in the catalytic presence of water or air moisture. Rust consists of hydrous iron(III) oxides (Fe2O3·nH2O) and iron(III) oxide-hydroxide (FeO(OH ...

, Scala,

Smalltalk Smalltalk is an object-oriented, dynamically typed reflective programming language. It was designed and created in part for educational use, specifically for constructionist learning, at the Learning Research Group (LRG) of Xerox PARC by Alan Ka ...

, and

Swift Swift or SWIFT most commonly refers to: * SWIFT, an international organization facilitating transactions between banks ** SWIFT code * Swift (programming language) * Swift (bird), a family of birds It may also refer to: Organizations * SWIFT, ...

Data types and syntax

BSON has a published specification. The topmost element in the structure must be of type BSON object and contains 1 or more elements, where an element consists of a field name, a type, and a value. Field names are strings. Types include: *

Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...

string (using the

UTF-8 UTF-8 is a variable-width encoding, variable-length character encoding used for electronic communication. Defined by the Unicode Standard, the name is derived from ''Unicode'' (or ''Universal Coded Character Set'') ''Transformation Format 8-bit'' ...

encoding) * 32 bit integer * 64 bit integer *

double A double is a look-alike or doppelgänger; one person or being that resembles another. Double, The Double or Dubble may also refer to: Film and television * Double (filmmaking), someone who substitutes for the credited actor of a character * Th ...

(64-bit

IEEE 754 The IEEE Standard for Floating-Point Arithmetic (IEEE 754) is a technical standard for floating-point arithmetic established in 1985 by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). The standard addressed many problems found i ...

floating point number) *

decimal128 In computing, decimal128 is a decimal floating-point computer numbering format that occupies 16 bytes (128 bits) in computer memory. It is intended for applications where it is necessary to emulate decimal rounding exactly, such as fina ...

(128-bit

IEEE 754-2008 The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operation ...

floating point number;

Binary Integer Decimal The IEEE 754-2008 standard includes decimal floating-point number formats in which the significand and the exponent (and the payloads of NaNs) can be encoded in two ways, referred to as binary encoding and ''decimal encoding''. Both formats brea ...

(BID) variant), suitable as a carrier for decimal-place sensitive financial data and arbitrary precision numerics with 34 decimal digits of precision, a max value of approximately 10⁶¹⁴⁵ * datetime w/o time zone (long integer number of milliseconds since the

Unix epoch Current Unix time () Unix time is a date and time representation widely used in computing. It measures time by the number of seconds that have elapsed since 00:00:00 UTC on 1 January 1970, the beginning of the Unix epoch, less adjustments m ...

) * byte array (for arbitrary binary data) * boolean (true and false) *

null Null may refer to: Science, technology, and mathematics Computing * Null (SQL) (or NULL), a special marker and keyword in SQL indicating that something has no value * Null character, the zero-valued ASCII character, also designated by , often use ...

* BSON object * BSON array * JavaScript code * MD5 binary data *

Regular expression A regular expression (shortened as regex or regexp; sometimes referred to as rational expression) is a sequence of characters that specifies a search pattern in text. Usually such patterns are used by string-searching algorithms for "find" or ...

(

compatible regular expressions ("

PCRE Perl Compatible Regular Expressions (PCRE) is a library written in C, which implements a regular expression engine, inspired by the capabilities of the Perl programming language. Philip Hazel started writing PCRE in summer 1997. PCRE's syntax i ...

") version 8.41 with UTF-8 support) An important differentiator to

is that BSON contains types not present in JSON (e.g. datetime and byte array) and offers type-strict handling for several numeric types instead of a universal "number" type. For situations where these additional types need to be represented in a textual way, MongoDB's Extended JSON format can be used.

Efficiency

Compared to JSON, BSON is designed to be efficient both in storage space and scan-speed. Large elements in a BSON document are prefixed with a length field to facilitate scanning. In some cases, BSON will use more space than JSON due to the length prefixes and explicit array indices.

Example

A document such as will be stored as:

\x16\x00\x00\x00          // total document size
\x02                      // 0x02 = type String
hello\x00                 // field name
\x06\x00\x00\x00world\x00 // field value (size of value, value, null terminator)
\x00                      // 0x00 = type EOO ('end of object')

References

External links

*
tool included with MongoDB
{{Data Exchange JSON Data serialization formats Document-oriented databases

Data types and syntax

Efficiency

Example

See also

References

External links