Generic String Encoding Rules (GSER) for ASN.1 Types
RFC 3641
| Document | Type |
RFC - Proposed Standard
(October 2003; No errata)
Updated by RFC 4792
Was draft-legg-ldap-gser (individual in app area)
|
|
|---|---|---|---|
| Author | Steven Legg | ||
| Last updated | 2018-07-18 | ||
| Stream | Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) | ||
| Formats | plain text html pdf htmlized (tools) htmlized bibtex | ||
| Stream | WG state | (None) | |
| Document shepherd | No shepherd assigned | ||
| IESG | IESG state | RFC 3641 (Proposed Standard) | |
| Action Holders |
(None)
|
||
| Consensus Boilerplate | Unknown | ||
| Telechat date | |||
| Responsible AD | Ted Hardie | ||
| IESG note |
New versions exists which is verified with IESG Responsible: Patrik |
||
| Send notices to | <kurt@openLDAP.org> | ||
Network Working Group S. Legg
Request for Comments: 3641 Adacel Technologies
Category: Standards Track October 2003
Generic String Encoding Rules (GSER) for ASN.1 Types
Status of this Memo
This document specifies an Internet standards track protocol for the
Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions for
improvements. Please refer to the current edition of the "Internet
Official Protocol Standards" (STD 1) for the standardization state
and status of this protocol. Distribution of this memo is unlimited.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2003). All Rights Reserved.
Abstract
This document defines a set of Abstract Syntax Notation One (ASN.1)
encoding rules, called the Generic String Encoding Rules (GSER), that
produce a human readable text encoding for values of any given ASN.1
data type.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. Conventions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3. Generic String Encoding Rules. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3.1. Type Referencing Notations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3.2. Restricted Character String Types. . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3.3. ChoiceOfStrings Types. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.4. Identifiers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3.5. BIT STRING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3.6. BOOLEAN. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3.7. ENUMERATED . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.8. INTEGER. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.9. NULL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.10. OBJECT IDENTIFIER and RELATIVE-OID . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.11. OCTET STRING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
3.12. CHOICE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
3.13. SEQUENCE and SET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
3.14. SEQUENCE OF and SET OF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
3.15. CHARACTER STRING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
3.16. EMBEDDED PDV . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
3.17. EXTERNAL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Legg Standards Track [Page 1]
RFC 3641 Generic String Encoding Rules October 2003
3.18. INSTANCE OF. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
3.19. REAL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
3.20. Variant Encodings. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
4. GSER Transfer Syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
5. Security Considerations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
6. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
6.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
6.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
7. Intellectual Property Notice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
8. Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
9. Full Copyright Statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
1. Introduction
This document defines a set of ASN.1 [8] encoding rules, called the
Generic String Encoding Rules or GSER, that produce a human readable
UTF-8 [6] character string encoding of ASN.1 values of any given
arbitrary ASN.1 type.
Note that "ASN.1 value" does not mean a Basic Encoding Rules (BER)
[12] encoded value. The ASN.1 value is an abstract concept that is
independent of any particular encoding. BER is just one possible
encoding of an ASN.1 value.
GSER is based on ASN.1 value notation [8], with changes to
accommodate the notation's use as a transfer syntax, and to support
well established ad-hoc string encodings for Lightweight Directory
Access Protocol (LDAP) [14] directory data types.
Though primarily intended for defining the LDAP-specific encoding of
new LDAP attribute syntaxes and assertion syntaxes, these encoding
rules could also be used in other domains where human readable
renderings of ASN.1 values would be useful.
Referencing GSER is sufficient to define a human readable text
encoding for values of a specific ASN.1 type, however other
specifications may wish to provide a customized Augmented Backus-Naur
Form (ABNF) [3] description, independent of the ASN.1, as a
convenience for the implementor (equivalent ABNF for the GSER
encodings for ASN.1 types commonly occurring in LDAP syntaxes is
provided in a separate document [15]). Such a specification SHOULD
state that if there is a discrepancy between the customized ABNF and
the GSER encoding defined by this document, that the GSER encoding
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