Re: [Json] JSON Concluded? Well, maybe not

[Phillip Hallam-Baker <[e-mail]>]

The use case that I believe gives rise to the belief canonicalization is
necessary is the need to sign a data object in the same JSON document. I
have this need frequently:

{ {A = [... JSON Data...]} { Signature (A) } }

The way I solve this using JSON is to BASE-64 encode:

{ { A = base64(... JSON Data...)} { Signature (A) } }

Which is brutal but entirely effective and only expands the data by 33%

For an efficient encoding, I use JSON-B which is a strict superset of JSON
with additional code points that allow binary data to be spliced in.

JSON only uses bytes in the range 1-127 for tagging. Bytes in the range
128-255 can only occur inside strings. Which means all the other values can
be repurposed

In JSON-B, the binary sequence 01 02 03 can be encoded as either "AQID" or

88 03 01 02 03

The first byte says that this is a binary value with an 8 bit length and
the final block of the sequence (i.e. there is only one block in this
sequence).

The second byte is the length.

The rest is the data.


I would much rather extend JSON to support efficient encoding of any binary
value than develop a canonicalization hack that could only ever work for
JSON.

http://www.prismproof.org/Documents/draft-hallambaker-jsonbcd.html