ChainPack - the best from both XML and JSON

Motivation

XML

PROS:

• ability to annotate element with attributes

CONS:

• boring verbose tag closing, not very usefull when doc is generated by machine.
• element anotations are not XML. CSS might be also XML if this would be.
• no standard binary representation

JSON

PROS:

• not as verbose as XML

CONS:

• no attributes.
• no standard binary representation
• lack of BLOB type
• Strings are not encoded in UTF8

ChainPack

PROS:

• binary ChainPack and text Cpon representation with easy and fast conversion (see cp2cp)
• any value can have metadata. Metadata itself are ChainPack/Cpon again. Even more, the metatada values can have own metadata etc.
• Cpon is JSON superset with only exception that string values are always encoded in UTF8.
• binary packed data are relatively small. Size is slightly bigger than MessagePack or Cbor
• BLOB support
• C, C++, D, Python, JavaScript bindings

CONS:

• user have to learn something very new with poor community support

More detailed information can be found on wiki.

Build

qmake SHV_PROJECT_TOP_BUILDDIR=`pwd`
make