BSON is short for "Binary JSON," and is the binary-encoded serialization of JSON-like documents. You can learn more about it in the specification.

• Usage
• Bugs/Feature Requests
• Installation
• Documentation
• FAQ

Think you've found a bug? Want to see a new feature in bson? Please open a case in our issue management tool, JIRA:

1. Create an account and login: jira.mongodb.org
2. Navigate to the NODE project: jira.mongodb.org/browse/NODE
3. Click Create Issue - Please provide as much information as possible about the issue and how to reproduce it.

Bug reports in JIRA for the NODE driver project are public.

To build a new version perform the following operations:

npm install
npm run build

When using a bundler or Node.js you can import bson using the package name:

import { BSON, EJSON, ObjectId } from 'bson';
// or:
// const { BSON, EJSON, ObjectId } = require('bson');

const bytes = BSON.serialize({ _id: new ObjectId() });
console.log(bytes);
const doc = BSON.deserialize(bytes);
console.log(EJSON.stringify(doc));
// {"_id":{"$oid":"..."}}

If you are working directly in the browser without a bundler please use the .mjs bundle like so:

<script type="module">
  import { BSON, EJSON, ObjectId } from './lib/bson.mjs';

  const bytes = BSON.serialize({ _id: new ObjectId() });
  console.log(bytes);
  const doc = BSON.deserialize(bytes);
  console.log(EJSON.stringify(doc));
  // {"_id":{"$oid":"..."}}
</script>

npm install bson

Only the following version combinations with the MongoDB Node.js Driver are considered stable.

API documentation

• EJSON

  • .parse(text, [options])

  • .stringify(value, [replacer], [space], [options])

  • .serialize(bson, [options])

  • .deserialize(ejson, [options])

Parse an Extended JSON string, constructing the JavaScript value or object described by that string.

Example

const { EJSON } = require('bson');
const text = '{ "int32": { "$numberInt": "10" } }';

// prints { int32: { [String: '10'] _bsontype: 'Int32', value: '10' } }
console.log(EJSON.parse(text, { relaxed: false }));

// prints { int32: 10 }
console.log(EJSON.parse(text));

Converts a BSON document to an Extended JSON string, optionally replacing values if a replacer function is specified or optionally including only the specified properties if a replacer array is specified.

Example

const { EJSON } = require('bson');
const Int32 = require('mongodb').Int32;
const doc = { int32: new Int32(10) };

// prints '{"int32":{"$numberInt":"10"}}'
console.log(EJSON.stringify(doc, { relaxed: false }));

// prints '{"int32":10}'
console.log(EJSON.stringify(doc));

Serializes an object to an Extended JSON string, and reparse it as a JavaScript object.

Deserializes an Extended JSON object into a plain JavaScript object with native/BSON types

It is our recommendation to use BSONError.isBSONError() checks on errors and to avoid relying on parsing error.message and error.name strings in your code. We guarantee BSONError.isBSONError() checks will pass according to semver guidelines, but errors may be sub-classed or their messages may change at any time, even patch releases, as we see fit to increase the helpfulness of the errors.

Any new errors we add to the driver will directly extend an existing error class and no existing error will be moved to a different parent class outside of a major release. This means BSONError.isBSONError() will always be able to accurately capture the errors that our BSON library throws.

Hypothetical example: A collection in our Db has an issue with UTF-8 data:

let documentCount = 0;
const cursor = collection.find({}, { utf8Validation: true });
try {
  for await (const doc of cursor) documentCount += 1;
} catch (error) {
  if (BSONError.isBSONError(error)) {
    console.log(`Found the troublemaker UTF-8!: ${documentCount} ${error.message}`);
    return documentCount;
  }
  throw error;
}

BSON vendors the required polyfills for TextEncoder, TextDecoder, atob, btoa imported from React Native and therefore doesn't expect users to polyfill these. One additional polyfill, crypto.getRandomValues is recommended and can be installed with the following command:

npm install --save react-native-get-random-values

The following snippet should be placed at the top of the entrypoint (by default this is the root index.js file) for React Native projects using the BSON library. These lines must be placed for any code that imports BSON.

// Required Polyfills For ReactNative
import 'react-native-get-random-values';

Finally, import the BSON library like so:

import { BSON, EJSON } from 'bson';

This will cause React Native to import the node_modules/bson/lib/bson.rn.cjs bundle (see the "react-native" setting we have in the "exports" section of our package.json.)

The "exports" definition in our package.json will result in BSON's CommonJS bundle being imported in a React Native project instead of the ES module bundle. Importing the CommonJS bundle is necessary because BSON's ES module bundle of BSON uses top-level await, which is not supported syntax in React Native's runtime hermes.

The undefined BSON type has been deprecated for many years, so this library has dropped support for it. Use the ignoreUndefined option (for example, from the driver ) to instead remove undefined keys.

This library looks for toBSON() functions on every path, and calls the toBSON() function to get the value to serialize.

const BSON = require('bson');

class CustomSerialize {
  toBSON() {
    return 42;
  }
}

const obj = { answer: new CustomSerialize() };
// "{ answer: 42 }"
console.log(BSON.deserialize(BSON.serialize(obj)));