# ASN.1 for Ruby **URL:** \ **Category:** ruby-talk\ **Created:** [7 July 2006 16:33 UTC](https://rubytalk.org/t/asn-1-for-ruby/28736 "2006-07-07T16:33:43Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Francis\_Cianfrocca](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/7bcc69/32.png) [@Francis\_Cianfrocca](https://rubytalk.org/u/Francis_Cianfrocca)\ **Post date:** [7 July 2006 16:33 UTC](https://rubytalk.org/t/asn-1-for-ruby/28736/1 "2006-07-07T16:33:43Z")
ASN.1 is one of those binary formats that grew out of ISO. It's lack of popularity can perhaps be attributed to the lack of popularity for other ISO things like X.400 (ISO MOTIS) mail. \<\<\<\<\<\<\<\<\<\<\< Is anyone actually interested in ASN.1 support for Ruby? I implemented enough of it for LDAP in the Net::LDAP library, in a reasonably encapsulated way so it could be abstracted into its own package. I'd be happy to do this if anyone has a use for it. > **路路路** > > On another thread ("Grails"), Tor Iver Wilhelmsen \ wrote: > > > [M] Built-in support for ASN.1 would be nice as well. Admittedly, > > ASN.1 has apparently been relegated to "just for SNMP traps", > > despite the fact that ASN.1 can in theory replace RMI entirely, much > > like SOAP. Watch this space. ---
**Author:** ![Andrew\_Hodgkinson](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9fc29f/32.png) [@Andrew\_Hodgkinson](https://rubytalk.org/u/Andrew_Hodgkinson)\ **Post date:** [7 July 2006 18:40 UTC](https://rubytalk.org/t/asn-1-for-ruby/28736/2 "2006-07-07T18:40:36Z")
Francis Cianfrocca wrote: > Is anyone actually interested in ASN.1 support for Ruby? I implemented > enough of it for LDAP in the Net::LDAP library, in a reasonably > encapsulated way so it could be abstracted into its own package. I'd > be happy to do this if anyone has a use for it. OpenSSL comes with an awful lot of ASN.1 code, though I don't know how extensive this is compared to your requirements or your implementation. Extracting the ASN.1 part of your LDAP library sounds reasonable. However, would it be worth instead (or also) extending the Ruby interface to OpenSSL to expose its ASN.1 features? Sadly documentation on both sides of the fence is pretty poor which might not help. Ruby OpenSSL doesn't have much at all; as a starting point see:   [http://raa.ruby-lang.org/project/openssl/](http://raa.ruby-lang.org/project/openssl/) That said there are people using it. It seems to give straightforward code from the little bits that I've seen used so far, such as here:   [http://technoweenie.stikipad.com/plugins/show/Reversible+Encrypted+Passwords](http://technoweenie.stikipad.com/plugins/show/Reversible+Encrypted+Passwords) Although a lot of the crypto library is now documented, the OpenSSL project hasn't described the ASN.1 API yet:   [http://www.openssl.org/docs/crypto/crypto.html](http://www.openssl.org/docs/crypto/crypto.html) The distribution does come with a few relevant .pod files that don't seem to be online but they only cover a tiny fraction of the interface visible in \. Meanwhile, Google returns nothing but security advisories for "openssl 'asn.1'"... Is it me, or have I just spent the last few minutes arguing against myself? 馃檪 > **路路路** > > -- > Posted via [http://www.ruby-forum.com/\](http://www.ruby-forum.com/%5C). ---
**Author:** ![JONNALAGADDA\_Sriniv1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/34f0e0/32.png) [@JONNALAGADDA\_Sriniv1](https://rubytalk.org/u/JONNALAGADDA_Sriniv1)\ **Post date:** [8 July 2006 06:26 UTC](https://rubytalk.org/t/asn-1-for-ruby/28736/3 "2006-07-08T06:26:42Z")
Francis Cianfrocca wrote: > ASN.1 is one of those binary formats that grew out of ISO. It's lack > of popularity can perhaps be attributed to the lack of popularity for > other ISO things like X.400 (ISO MOTIS) mail. JS: Several of the biological and chemical databases compiled by NCBI     use ASN.1 format. For backward compatibility, they also provide flat     files. However, for newer software, ASN.1 format is recommended. > Is anyone actually interested in ASN.1 support for Ruby? I implemented > enough of it for LDAP in the Net::LDAP library, in a reasonably > encapsulated > way so it could be abstracted into its own package. I'd be happy to do this > if anyone has a use for it. JS: It would be great to have a Ruby library to parse and search such     biological and chemical databases in ASN.1 format. For now, since I     do not have the time to develop one, I am using their flat file     format. You could take a look at [http://www.ncbi.nih.gov/Sitemap/samplerecord.html](http://www.ncbi.nih.gov/Sitemap/samplerecord.html) to see a sample of the data in flat format. Please send an e-mail to me offline, should you feel that you could extract and complete your library. Best regards, JS ---
**Author:** ![Francis\_Cianfrocca](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/7bcc69/32.png) [@Francis\_Cianfrocca](https://rubytalk.org/u/Francis_Cianfrocca)\ **Post date:** [7 July 2006 18:54 UTC](https://rubytalk.org/t/asn-1-for-ruby/28736/4 "2006-07-07T18:54:50Z")
The SSL/TLS wire protocol is a binary format, but it's not based on ASN.1. You may be thinking of the X.509 and PKCS standards, which are full of ASN.1stuff (and of course they're implemented in the crypto libraries that come with OpenSSL). For all those applications, I'd say the less the users know about the data-representation, the better. I was wondering about plain old ASN.1 with BER/DER/CER as a transport protocol. My guess is that it's not very interesting these days. > **路路路** > > On 7/7/06, Andrew Hodgkinson \ wrote: > > > Francis Cianfrocca wrote: > > > > \> Is anyone actually interested in ASN.1 support for Ruby? I implemented > > \> enough of it for LDAP in the Net::LDAP library, in a reasonably > > \> encapsulated way so it could be abstracted into its own package. I'd > > \> be happy to do this if anyone has a use for it. > > > > OpenSSL comes with an awful lot of ASN.1 code, though I don't know how > > extensive this is compared to your requirements or your implementation. > > Extracting the ASN.1 part of your LDAP library sounds reasonable. > > However, would it be worth instead (or also) extending the Ruby > > interface to OpenSSL to expose its ASN.1 features? > > > > Sadly documentation on both sides of the fence is pretty poor which > > might not help. Ruby OpenSSL doesn't have much at all; as a starting > > point see: > > > >   [http://raa.ruby-lang.org/project/openssl/](http://raa.ruby-lang.org/project/openssl/) > > > > That said there are people using it. It seems to give straightforward > > code from the little bits that I've seen used so far, such as here: > > > > [http://technoweenie.stikipad.com/plugins/show/Reversible+Encrypted+Passwords](http://technoweenie.stikipad.com/plugins/show/Reversible+Encrypted+Passwords) > > > > Although a lot of the crypto library is now documented, the OpenSSL > > project hasn't described the ASN.1 API yet: > > > >   [http://www.openssl.org/docs/crypto/crypto.html](http://www.openssl.org/docs/crypto/crypto.html) > > > > The distribution does come with a few relevant .pod files that don't > > seem to be online but they only cover a tiny fraction of the interface > > visible in \. Meanwhile, Google returns nothing but > > security advisories for "openssl 'asn.1'"... Is it me, or have I just > > spent the last few minutes arguing against myself? 馃檪 > > > > -- > > Posted via [http://www.ruby-forum.com/\](http://www.ruby-forum.com/%5C). ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_Bray](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e480ec/32.png) [@Tim\_Bray](https://rubytalk.org/u/Tim_Bray)\ **Post date:** [8 July 2006 15:14 UTC](https://rubytalk.org/t/asn-1-for-ruby/28736/5 "2006-07-08T15:14:15Z")
People who offer data like this usually regret it when they discover how few ASN.1 tools there are. I've \*never\* found a decently-performing free general-purpose ASN.1 reader; there are a few that you can find, but they're typically buggy, slow, and usually fail on the dataset that you're interested in. -Tim > **路路路** > > On Jul 7, 2006, at 11:26 PM, Srinivas JONNALAGADDA wrote: > > > JS: Several of the biological and chemical databases compiled by NCBI > >     use ASN.1 format. For backward compatibility, they also provide flat > >     files. However, for newer software, ASN.1 format is recommended. ---
**Author:** ![Francis\_Cianfrocca](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/7bcc69/32.png) [@Francis\_Cianfrocca](https://rubytalk.org/u/Francis_Cianfrocca)\ **Post date:** [8 July 2006 19:11 UTC](https://rubytalk.org/t/asn-1-for-ruby/28736/6 "2006-07-08T19:11:44Z")
The thing about ASN.1 is that it's not a grammar. It's actually a grammar-grammar, so it always makes use of an context-specific data definition for each domain. Has NCBI published one for theirs? > **路路路** > > On 7/8/06, Srinivas JONNALAGADDA \ wrote: > > > Francis Cianfrocca wrote: > > \> ASN.1 is one of those binary formats that grew out of ISO. It's lack > > \> of popularity can perhaps be attributed to the lack of popularity for > > \> other ISO things like X.400 (ISO MOTIS) mail. > > > > JS: Several of the biological and chemical databases compiled by NCBI > >     use ASN.1 format. For backward compatibility, they also provide flat > >     files. However, for newer software, ASN.1 format is recommended. > > > > \> Is anyone actually interested in ASN.1 support for Ruby? I implemented > > \> enough of it for LDAP in the Net::LDAP library, in a reasonably > > \> encapsulated > > \> way so it could be abstracted into its own package. I'd be happy to do > > this > > \> if anyone has a use for it. > > > > JS: It would be great to have a Ruby library to parse and search such > >     biological and chemical databases in ASN.1 format. For now, since I > >     do not have the time to develop one, I am using their flat file > >     format. > > > > You could take a look at > > [http://www.ncbi.nih.gov/Sitemap/samplerecord.html](http://www.ncbi.nih.gov/Sitemap/samplerecord.html) to see a sample of the > > data in flat format. > > > > Please send an e-mail to me offline, should you feel that you could > > extract and complete your library. > > > > Best regards, > > > > JS ---
**Author:** ![Andrew\_Hodgkinson](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9fc29f/32.png) [@Andrew\_Hodgkinson](https://rubytalk.org/u/Andrew_Hodgkinson)\ **Post date:** [7 July 2006 19:25 UTC](https://rubytalk.org/t/asn-1-for-ruby/28736/7 "2006-07-07T19:25:02Z")
Francis Cianfrocca wrote: > You may be thinking of the X.509 and PKCS standards, which are full of > ASN.1stuff (and of course they're implemented in the crypto libraries > that come with OpenSSL). For all those applications, I'd say the less > the users know about the data-representation, the better. Yes, I was thinking of this ASN.1 code. The crypto library is highly modular; it includes what looks like a generic ASN.1 support library. The X.509 etc. code calls into it, but although the asn1.h public header file does contain some items that are specfic to OpenSSL operations, it gives the impression that it could be used for a much wider range of applications. Of course, I could be wrong. I've uploaded the header from openssl-0.9.8b at the URL below in case you're interested, to save you having to get the whole tarball just for that one file:   [http://pond.org.uk/misc/asn1.h](http://pond.org.uk/misc/asn1.h) > **路路路** > > -- > Posted via [http://www.ruby-forum.com/\](http://www.ruby-forum.com/%5C). ---
**Author:** ![JONNALAGADDA\_Sriniv1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/34f0e0/32.png) [@JONNALAGADDA\_Sriniv1](https://rubytalk.org/u/JONNALAGADDA_Sriniv1)\ **Post date:** [9 July 2006 04:04 UTC](https://rubytalk.org/t/asn-1-for-ruby/28736/8 "2006-07-09T04:04:54Z")
Tim Bray wrote: > > JS: Several of the biological and chemical databases compiled by NCBI > >     use ASN.1 format. For backward compatibility, they also provide flat > >     files. However, for newer software, ASN.1 format is recommended. > > People who offer data like this usually regret it when they discover how > few ASN.1 tools there are. I've \*never\* found a decently-performing free > general-purpose ASN.1 reader; there are a few that you can find, but > they're typically buggy, slow, and usually fail on the dataset that > you're interested in. -Tim That is probably why NCBI, in this case, also provides a set of tools to deal with their data. However, if I could quickly write a few lines of Ruby to parse some data in my own way, I would rather avoid doing that in C. And that is how I was asking Francis about a Ruby ASN.1 library. Best regards, JS > **路路路** > > > On Jul 7, 2006, at 11:26 PM, Srinivas JONNALAGADDA wrote: ---
**Author:** ![Daniel\_Martin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/dc4da7/32.png) [@Daniel\_Martin](https://rubytalk.org/u/Daniel_Martin)\ **Post date:** [11 July 2006 14:23 UTC](https://rubytalk.org/t/asn-1-for-ruby/28736/9 "2006-07-11T14:23:21Z")
"Francis Cianfrocca" \ writes: > The thing about ASN.1 is that it's not a grammar. It's actually a > grammar-grammar, so it always makes use of an context-specific data > definition for each domain. Has NCBI published one for theirs? There are a whole load of \*.asn files (in ASN.1 format) inside ftp://ftp.ncbi.nih.gov/toolbox/ncbi\_tools/CURRENT/ncbi.tar.gz ---
**Author:** ![Francis\_Cianfrocca](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/7bcc69/32.png) [@Francis\_Cianfrocca](https://rubytalk.org/u/Francis_Cianfrocca)\ **Post date:** [7 July 2006 20:06 UTC](https://rubytalk.org/t/asn-1-for-ruby/28736/10 "2006-07-07T20:06:20Z")
Thanks for sending the library, Andrew, but as it turns out I'm already quite familiar with the inside of OpenSSL ;-). Part of the point of doing the Net::LDAP library (and an eventual Net::ASN1 library should there be a need for it) is to have everything be in pure Ruby. > **路路路** > > On 7/7/06, Andrew Hodgkinson \ wrote: > > > Francis Cianfrocca wrote: > > > > \> You may be thinking of the X.509 and PKCS standards, which are full of > > \> ASN.1stuff (and of course they're implemented in the crypto libraries > > \> that come with OpenSSL). For all those applications, I'd say the less > > \> the users know about the data-representation, the better. > > > > Yes, I was thinking of this ASN.1 code. The crypto library is highly > > modular; it includes what looks like a generic ASN.1 support library. > > The X.509 etc. code calls into it, but although the asn1.h public header > > file does contain some items that are specfic to OpenSSL operations, it > > gives the impression that it could be used for a much wider range of > > applications. Of course, I could be wrong. I've uploaded the header from > > openssl-0.9.8b at the URL below in case you're interested, to save you > > having to get the whole tarball just for that one file: > > > >   [http://pond.org.uk/misc/asn1.h](http://pond.org.uk/misc/asn1.h) > > > > -- > > Posted via [http://www.ruby-forum.com/\](http://www.ruby-forum.com/%5C).