You may also want to consider cbor: http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7049 http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7049 It doesn't require canonicalization, but it has a sug

You may also want to consider cbor: http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7049 http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7049 It doesn't require canonicalization, but it has a suggested format for canonicalization, and libraries I've been using have made it reasonably possible to force field ordering. Though this may be something of a tangent, since as kentonv says, canonicalization is only part of the dance; it all depends on what other actors do as well. :)