Data

The message data is the property of the message that provides instructions or values for the receiving process. The message data consists of fields that carry a unit of information. Message data can contain any number of fields, although most messages have a well-defined layout for their fields. Each field has the properties type and value.

Type

Type identifies the format of the field value, such as integer, character, or string. The valid field types are:

Type:	String
Default Value:	None
Valid Values:	Any combination of fields, each containing a type property and a value property

Table 1 Valid Field Types
Field Type	Meaning
CHAR	One-byte integer
BINARY	Non-restrictive array of characters, such as an entire C data structure or the entire contents of a file
STR	A C string (`NULL`-terminated array of characters)
STR_ARRAY	Array of STR
INT2	Two-byte integer
INT2_ARRAY	Array of INT2
INT4	Four-byte integer
INT4_ARRAY	Array of INT4
INT8	Eight-byte integer
INT8_ARRAY	Array of INT8
REAL4	Four-byte real number
REAL4_ARRAY	Array of REAL4
REAL8	Eight-byte real number
REAL8_ARRAY	Array of REAL8
REAL16	Sixteen-byte real number (not all platforms fully support this type)
REAL16_ARRAY	Array of REAL16
MSG	A message
MSG_ARRAY	Array of MSG
TIMESTAMP	Eight-byte real number representing time as a number of seconds
TIMESTAMP_ARRAY	Array of TIMESTAMP
UTF8	A UTF8 field
UTF8_ARRAY	Array of UTF8
BOOL	A Boolean field
BOOL_ARRAY	Array of BOOL
BYTE	A byte field
XML	XML object

Value

Value identifies the value of the field based on the field type, as well as a value of unknown. See Unknown Field Values.