mtp/docs/TYPE-MAP.md

Type Map

This file documents the Type Map & Registry configuration used by the MTP protocol. It will assume you are working with the example-type-maps.yaml.

Binary Frame Format

Every transport frame is a four-byte big-endian length followed by one CommunicationValue. The length counts all bytes after the length field.

This is the only transport frame length prefix. Transports write the CommunicationValue bytes directly and do not add another length before this field. The close-frame sentinel occupies the same four-byte position.

[4 bytes total length]
[2 bytes communication type]
[1 byte flags]
    bit 0 = has ID
    bit 1 = has sender ID
    bit 2 = has receiver ID
    bits 3-7 must be zero
[4 bytes ID]          if bit 0
[8 bytes sender ID]   if bit 1
[8 bytes receiver ID] if bit 2
[DataValue payload]

The only defined flag values are 0x01 for ID, 0x02 for sender, and 0x04 for receiver. Unknown flag bits are rejected. IDs are full-width unsigned big-endian values: the correlation ID is u32, while sender and receiver IDs are u64. Encryption and signing are properties of the DataValue payload, never of the frame header.

Relay is the reserved opaque application communication type. Relay frames omit the outer sender, expose only the next-hop receiver and transport correlation data, and carry the actual operation and application metadata in their protected payload.

DataValue Wire Format

Every DataValue begins with a one-byte kind marker. MTP assigns 0x01 and 0x02 to boolean true and false, 0x03 to signed i128, 0x04 to unsigned u128, 0x05 to f64, 0x06 to UTF-8 strings, 0x07 to bytes, 0x08 to arrays, 0x09 to containers, 0x0A to Encrypted<Value>, 0x0B to Signed<Value>, and 0xFF to null. Kind 0x0C is reserved and rejected. All multibyte numeric values, counts, and lengths are big-endian.

Strings and bytes have a four-byte byte length. Arrays have a two-byte element count followed by that many self-delimiting values. The protection wrappers have the following canonical layouts.

Container

09
[2 bytes element count]

repeat for each element:
    [2 bytes DataTypeId]
    [DataValue]

Container field IDs must be unique. Each nested value is self-delimiting, so container elements have no generic per-element payload length.

Signed

0B
[4 bytes wrapper length]

[1 byte signature algorithm]
[1 byte purpose]
[8 bytes signer ID]
[signature]
[DataValue]

The wrapper length counts the bytes after the length field. Signature length is determined by the signature algorithm. The signature covers MTP-DATA-SIGN-1 || algorithm || purpose || signer ID || serialized inner value.

Encrypted

0A
[4 bytes envelope length]

[1 byte encryption suite]
[1 byte purpose]
[2 bytes recipient count]

[recipient entry]
...

[encrypted DataValue bytes]

The envelope length counts the bytes after the length field. A recipient entry is an unlabeled fixed-size KEM ciphertext and wrapped content-encryption key; both lengths are determined by the selected suite. The encrypted bytes are the AEAD output for the complete serialized inner DataValue.

Protection nesting directly represents both signer-visibility choices: Encrypted(Signed(Container)) keeps signer metadata private, while Signed(Encrypted(Container)) exposes it. A frame with no outer sender and an Encrypted(Signed(Container)) payload uses sealed sender. Sealed sender adds no flag or distinct wire type.

TypeMap & Compile-Time Type Safety

A TypeMap maps Communication-Types and Data-Types to their wire IDs. Each protocol version has its own TypeMap because the same type name may use different wire IDs in different versions.

Type names are defined in a YAML config and turned into Rust enums at compile time by a build.rs in the type-map crate. This means invalid type names are caught by the compiler instead of failing at runtime.

Defining Type Maps

Place your own type-maps.yaml in your project root. Browser apps should use the Vite plugin so the app-specific WASM package is generated into Vite's cache during dev/build:

import { defineConfig } from "vite";
import { mtp } from "mtp/vite";

export default defineConfig({
  plugins: [mtp({ typeMaps: "./type-maps.yaml" })],
});

Rust and manual WASM builds can set MTP_TYPE_MAPS directly (see Customizing Type Maps in Downstream Projects).

For browser builds, protocol_version selects the one application map compiled into that WASM client. The Vite-generated mtp/type-map module contains the reserved MTP names and the application names from that selected version only; the selected version must be present in type_maps. This keeps its TypeScript unions aligned with the client runtime.

Using Generated Enums

After editing the config and rebuilding, CommunicationType and DataType enums are generated automatically. Use them in code:

use mtp::type_map::{CommunicationType, DataType, TypeMap};

let tm = TypeMap::v3_0();
let id = tm.data_id_enum(DataType::SomeType).unwrap();

For native builds with the registry feature, the enums are a union across all versions; every type name from every version is a variant. The version-specific TypeMap maps each variant to the correct wire ID for that version. For a type absent from a selected version, the lookup returns None. Browser-generated TypeScript unions intentionally differ: they contain only the selected protocol_version plus reserved names, matching the WASM client compiled by the Vite plugin.

Encoding/decoding uses a TypeMap to resolve type names to wire IDs:

use mtp::codec::{encode, decode, DataValue};
use mtp::type_map::TypeMap;

let tm = TypeMap::v2_0();
let value = DataValue::Str("hello".into());

let bytes = encode(&value, &tm).unwrap();
let decoded = decode(&bytes, &tm).unwrap();

let tm_v3 = TypeMap::v3_0();
assert!(tm_v3.data_id_enum(DataType::SomeType).is_some());

When communicating with a peer on another version, encode only variants that map in the negotiated version. If an incoming frame names a type absent from the selected map, reject it as a protocol or type-map compatibility error; do not reinterpret its wire ID using another version's map. The self-delimiting codec begins at protocol version 3.0; older versions are not codec fallbacks.

Forward/Backward Compatibility Between Versions

Because enums are a union of all types across versions, a variant might exist that has no wire mapping in the negotiated version:

v3.0 client sends DataType::SomeType    → host encodes with v3.0 TypeMap → wire ID 32
v3.0 host receives an unsupported pre-v3.0 peer                    → version negotiation error

Encoding a frame with an unmapped communication or data type returns CodecError::UnknownCommunicationType or CodecError::UnknownDataType. Select a mapped variant from the compiled-in version before sending it.

Registry

The registry feature of the Codec crate adds VersionedCodec for version-aware encoding:

Requires the host feature (which enables mtp-codec's registry feature):

[dependencies]
mtp = { path = "..", features = ["host"] }

use mtp::codec::registry::{Registry, VersionedCodec};

let registry = Registry::builtin();
let codec = VersionedCodec::new(registry);

// Encode with a specific version
let bytes = codec.encode(&value, Version(3, 0)).unwrap();

// Decode with a specific version
let decoded = codec.decode(&bytes, Version(3, 0)).unwrap();

Customizing Type Maps in Downstream Projects

External projects must provide their own type map configuration. Browser projects use the Vite plugin from Defining Type Maps and do not need to publish, fork, or copy a generated WASM package.

For Rust builds, or when invoking wasm-pack manually, set the MTP_TYPE_MAPS environment variable. If the variable points to an invalid file, the build fails. If MTP_TYPE_MAPS is not set, the build script emits a warning and generates reserved protocol types only; application-specific communication and data types will not be available.

1. Create a type-maps.yaml in your project root (or anywhere else, adapt the path accordingly)
2. Set the MTP_TYPE_MAPS environment variable in .cargo/config.toml:

# .cargo/config.toml
[env]
MTP_TYPE_MAPS = { value = "type-maps.yaml", relative = true }