Bugs in convert bson_t* to uint8_t* with libbson in C?

[Zhaoyu Yang]

Hello,

I am trying to send bson data via socket connection. I found an API dealing with this situation at bson api site. The API is as following:

 uint8_t * bson_destroy_with_steal (bson_t *bson, bool steal, uint32_t *length) 

Here is part of my program code:

// bson_t copy_b
// ... append something into copy_b;
        if(&copy_b) {
           const bson_t* pb = &copy_b;
           char* json_result = bson_as_canonical_extended_json(pb,NULL);




           write_json(outfname, json_result);
           bson_free(json_result);


           uint8_t*  buf = NULL;


           buf =  bson_destroy_with_steal(pb,true,&pb->len);
           write_bson(outfname,buf);
           free(buf);
           buf = NULL;

I expected to get the content in uint8_t characters by using this API. I only resulted in getting a weird symbol "|" in buf. But if I use bson_as_canonical_extended_json, the content is appropriately converted to json.

part of the json_result

...

[ "2260", "10:22:06.144732", " recvmsg", [ "16", [ "msg_namelen=0" ], "0" ] ], "13407" : [ "2260", "10:22:06.144877", " recvmsg", [ "16", [ "msg_namelen=0" ], "0" ] ], "13408" : [ "2260", "10:22:06.145019", " recvmsg", [ "16", [ "msg_namelen=0" ], "0" ] ], "13409" : [ "2260", "10:22:06.162379", " recvmsg", [ "16", [ "msg_namelen=0" ], "0" ] ]

...

The content of the buf:

"|"

Could anyone tell me is there anything wrong with my code or this API? Any help is appreciated.

Regards,

Zhaoyu

[A. Jesse Jiryu Davis]

BSON is a binary format that has some similar uses as JSON, but BSON is not JSON. You can convert from BSON to JSON with functions like bson_as_canonical_extended_json.

bson_destroy_with_steal does not convert from BSON to JSON. It gives you the binary contents of your BSON document. For more information on the BSON format, please see bsonspec.org.