RAE File Format

The RAE file format is an open and flexible format to transport any kind of measurement.

It consists of three main parts:

• The "magic string" at the beginning of the file for file identification.
• The container properties (the file header)
• The actual data.

The data containers are RFC 8949 Concise Binary Object Representation (CBOR) encoded (cbor.io, Wikipedia CBOR).
CBOR is a compact, efficient binary serialization format, designed to be easily parsed and interoperable. It is ideal for transmitting structured data.
There are a lot of free implementations for reading/writing CBOR for every widely used programming language like C#, C++, Java, or TypeScript: https://cbor.io/impls.html

File structure

• File Identification — the magic string at the start of every RAE file
• MIME Type — application/vnd.rhopoint.rae+binary
• File Header — CBOR-encoded RaeBinaryFile record
• Decompression and parsing — gzip and CBOR decoding steps

Payload structure

• MeasurementComponentMetaTuple — the payload: an array of meta/component tuples
• MeasurementComponent — the measurement tree: components, metadata, source
• Measurement Data Types — polymorphic data records: single values and files

Related formats

• JSON Variant — the same content as a plain JSON document (application/vnd.rhopoint.rae+json)
• RAA File Format — an archive (ZIP) bundling multiple RAE files