Binary Encoding for the Message Relay Interface

Open Protocol Labs ([e-mail])

Authors: David Case ([e-mail])

Abstract

An alternative wire format for the BRC-33 message relay interface: the same requests and responses as DAG-CBOR instead of JSON, with the message body and identity keys as byte strings.

Motivation

Text encoding makes binary data larger, and the growth compounds when a text-encoded payload itself carries binary encoded as text.

Specification

The endpoints, authentication and semantics are those of BRC-33. A request with Content-Type: application/cbor is answered in CBOR; a JSON request is answered in JSON. Each JSON object becomes a DAG-CBOR map with the same keys.

Endpoint	Request	Response
POST /sendMessage	{ message: { recipient: bstr(33), messageBox: tstr, body: bstr } }	{ status: tstr, messageId: tstr }
POST /listMessages	{ messageBox: tstr }	{ status: tstr, messages: [ { messageId: tstr, body: bstr, sender: bstr(33) } ] }
POST /acknowledgeMessage	{ messageIds: [ tstr ] }	{ status: tstr }

recipient and sender are 33-byte compressed identity keys. body is opaque bytes, delivered as submitted.

References

• BRC-33: PeerServ Message Relay Interface

• DAG-CBOR specification