bovnar 1.0.0

Python bindings for the Bovnar (BVNR) typed, unit-aware serialisation format

bovnar

Python bindings for Bovnar (BVNR) — a typed, unit-aware serialisation format with a C99 reference implementation.

In scientific and industrial systems the expensive failures are rarely bad syntax — they are unit confusion: a value written in pounds-force and read as newtons, feet read as metres. The number parses fine; the dimension is wrong. Bovnar closes that gap: every value carries its own type family, bit-width, numeric base, and physical unit, inline in the byte stream, validated by the parser.

.velocity     = <float:64,m/s> 9.81;
.max_packet   = <uint:64,Mi~B> 16;
.price        = <float_dec:64,USD> 19.99;
.matrix       = [1, 2, 3]/[4, 5, 6];

The wheel bundles the compiled libbvnr_shared library, so there is nothing to build and no system dependency to install — the bindings load it in-process via ctypes.

Install

pip install bovnar

Optional integrations:

pip install "bovnar[numpy]"   # numpy array bridge
pip install "bovnar[pint]"    # pint unit-registry bridge
pip install "bovnar[all]"     # both

Usage

High-level dict API:

import bovnar

doc = bovnar.dumps({
    "host": "api.example.com",
    "port": 443,
    "ratio": 3.5,
    "matrix": [[1, 2, 3], [4, 5, 6]],
})
print(doc.decode())

back = bovnar.loads(doc)
assert back["matrix"] == [[1, 2, 3], [4, 5, 6]]

Pass typed=True to loads() to preserve the exact type annotation and unit of each value as a Quantity:

data = bovnar.loads(b".velocity = <float:64,m/s> 9.81;\n", typed=True)
q = data["velocity"]
print(q.raw, bovnar.unit_to_str(q.unit))   # 9.81 m/s

Units and conversions are backed by the C library:

m, mps = bovnar.parse_unit("m"), bovnar.parse_unit("m/s")
print(bovnar.units_compatible(m, mps))      # False

A streaming SAX-style Reader/Writer and a random-access DomDoc API are also available — see the project documentation.

Links

• Source & docs: https://github.com/sothis/bovnar
• Format documentation: https://github.com/sothis/bovnar/tree/main/doc

License

MIT — see LICENSE.