Conversation
andy

Andy Newton

One of the things I don't like about the rdap client I maintain is that the text output is great for viewing the information but not so good with cut-n-paste. So I started hunting around for a text serialization format that works with serde, and really the only one (other than JSON) is YAML. So I tried it. Yuck. It was too verbose.

The alternative is to create a custom text serialization, and that sound awful. So I thought, why not RPSL? And well... I have started down that path. There is a good bit of custom logic in doing this as RPSL mixes object type / role / contact kind into one attribute name. But the format is good for conciseness and readability.

Of course, RFC 9537 redactions start causing problems, but there will just need to be some more custom logic for that. Ugh.
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paulehoffman@infosec.exchange

Paul Hoffman

Reply to @andy

@andy What is wrong with the cut-and-paste with the JSON you are producing?

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andy

Andy Newton

Reply to @paulehoffman@infosec.exchange
@paulehoffman It can be cut-and-paste but with RDAP that means cutting two or three screen-fulls of text if it is pretty JSON. RPSL is more concise and readable for this application however it is not a general purpose language.
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paulehoffman@infosec.exchange

Paul Hoffman

Reply to @andy

@andy The word "general" carries a lot of weight in that second sentence. :-)

A different option is to simply have an way for putting out not-pretty JSON output.

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andy

Andy Newton

Reply to @paulehoffman@infosec.exchange
@paulehoffman By general, I meant intended to be used by other types of applications. RPSL is geared toward routing database and can be used by IP registries in general. It can be used for domain registry information with the addition of some more object types. However, it would fall apart if used by an accounting application or an event organizing application or a microblogging application.

There is an option for non-pretty JSON... but users find it hard to read (as do I). That option is great when using the client to fetch the data, do caching etc... but passing the results out to another process for specific needs.

But even that is *meh* for custom processing. I'd like to embed a Lua interpreter and allow users to access to the API. But there are other fixes that are needed first.
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