---
name: "bson_streaming_bson"
section: "3"
platform: "linux"
package: "libbson-doc"
version: "1.23.1-1+deb12u3"
release: "Debian 12 (Bookworm)"
platforms: ["linux"]
url: "https://new.carta.tech/bson_streaming_bson"
---

# bson\_streaming\_bson(3)

Streaming BSON bson\_reader\_t provides a streaming reader which can be initialized with a filedescriptor or memory region. bson\_writer\_t provides a streaming writer which can be initialized with a memory region. (Streaming BSON to a file descriptor is not yet supported.)

## NAME

bson\_streaming\_bson - Streaming BSON

*bson\_reader\_t* provides a streaming reader which can be initialized with a filedescriptor or memory region. *bson\_writer\_t* provides a streaming writer which can be initialized with a memory region. (Streaming BSON to a file descriptor is not yet supported.)

## READING FROM A BSON STREAM

*bson\_reader\_t* provides a convenient API to read sequential BSON documents from a file-descriptor or memory buffer. The *bson\_reader\_read()* function will read forward in the underlying stream and return a *bson\_t* that can be inspected and iterated upon.

```
#include <stdio.h>
#include <bson/bson.h>
int
main (int argc, char *argv[])
{
   bson_reader_t *reader;
   const bson_t *doc;
   bson_error_t error;
   bool eof;
   reader = bson_reader_new_from_file ("mycollection.bson", &error);
   if (!reader) {
      fprintf (stderr, "Failed to open file.\n");
      return 1;
   }
   while ((doc = bson_reader_read (reader, &eof))) {
      char *str = bson_as_canonical_extended_json (doc, NULL);
      printf ("%s\n", str);
      bson_free (str);
   }
   if (!eof) {
      fprintf (stderr,
               "corrupted bson document found at %u\n",
               (unsigned) bson_reader_tell (reader));
   }
   bson_reader_destroy (reader);
   return 0;
}
```

See *bson\_reader\_new\_from\_fd()*, *bson\_reader\_new\_from\_file()*, and *bson\_reader\_new\_from\_data()* for more information.

## WRITING A SEQUENCE OF BSON DOCUMENTS

*bson\_writer\_t* provides a convenient API to write a sequence of BSON documents to a memory buffer that can grow with **realloc()**. The *bson\_writer\_begin()* and *bson\_writer\_end()* functions will manage the underlying buffer while building the sequence of documents.

This could also be useful if you want to write to a network packet while serializing the documents from a higher level language, (but do so just after the packets header).

```
#include <stdio.h>
#include <bson/bson.h>
#include <assert.h>
int
main (int argc, char *argv[])
{
   bson_writer_t *writer;
   bson_t *doc;
   uint8_t *buf = NULL;
   size_t buflen = 0;
   bool r;
   int i;
   writer = bson_writer_new (&buf, &buflen, 0, bson_realloc_ctx, NULL);
   for (i = 0; i < 10000; i++) {
      r = bson_writer_begin (writer, &doc);
      assert (r);
      r = BSON_APPEND_INT32 (doc, "i", i);
      assert (r);
      bson_writer_end (writer);
   }
   bson_free (buf);
   return 0;
}
```

See *bson\_writer\_new()* for more information.

## AUTHOR

MongoDB, Inc

## COPYRIGHT

2017-present, MongoDB, Inc