On Tue, Jun 05, 2018 at 03:09:17PM -0500, Eric Blake wrote: > On 06/05/2018 02:58 PM, Richard W.M. Jones wrote: > > > Binary blobs can always be base64 encoded for representation within > > > a valid JSON UTF-8 string (and we already have several QMP > > > interfaces that utilize base64 encoding to pass through what is > > > otherwise invalid UTF-8). It does inflate things slightly compared > > > to a format that allows a raw length coupled with raw data, but that > > > is not necessarily a problem. > > > > Of course how we represent them externally and/or while > > using QMP / qemu-img to store and retrieve them is up for grabs. > > Doesn't JSON allow binary to be encoded? (Knowing how poorly > > done JSON is, I wouldn't be surprised if not) > > JSON itself does not have a binary primitive; to pass arbitrary data through > JSON you have to first encode that data into something like base64 that can > then be represented as a UTF-8 string. For reference, look at > qapi/crypto.json and the definition of QCryptoSecretFormat.
But there isn't a way to figure out that a string is base64, which means each application needs to know whether it's a string or a binary. How about specifying the encoding in the value? string value: [A-Za-z][^=\0]=S[^\0]* base64 value: [A-Za-z][^=\0]=B[A-Za-z0-9+/]* or the key: S[A-Za-z][^=\0]=[^\0]* base64 value: B[A-Za-z][^=\0]=[A-Za-z0-9+/]* ? -- MST
