Protocols/OSCAR/Datatypes

The protocol is built on top of some common base types described below; these are the building blocks for all the other datatypes and SNACs. When encoding or decoding these types, make sure to use network byte order.

Base Types

Name	Size	Notes
u08	1 byte	Unsigned byte
u16	2 bytes	Unsigned two byte short
u32	4 bytes	Unsigned four byte int
f32	4 bytes	Four byte float
t70	4 bytes	Unsigned four byte timestamp, from UNIX EPOCH
UUID	16 bytes	Sixteen bytes that represent a UUID also known as a GUID
blob	length bytes	Used in a TLV, data type and size is defined by external values
empty	0 bytes	Used in a TLV, existence of tag causes behavior, the data is ignored

Strings

In general strings are not NULL terminated and are encoded using UTF8. A string is said to be compressed if all white spaces are removed and all upper case characters are converted to lower case.

Name	Size	Notes
string	data	Inside of TLVs a string inherits its length from the TLV length
string08	u08 + data	One byte length followed by that many bytes of data
string16	u16 + data	Two byte length followed by that many bytes of data