sbom

sbom

Go library for reading and writing Software Bill of Materials documents. Reads CycloneDX JSON/XML and SPDX JSON/tag-value into a single Document / Package / Relationship model, and writes that model back out as CycloneDX (JSON or XML) or SPDX JSON.

Ported from github.com/andrew/sbom.

Installation

go get github.com/git-pkgs/sbom

Parsing

import "github.com/git-pkgs/sbom"

data, _ := os.ReadFile("bom.cdx.json")
doc, err := sbom.Parse(data)
if err != nil {
    log.Fatal(err)
}

fmt.Println(doc.Type)             // cyclonedx
fmt.Println(doc.SpecVersion)      // 1.6
fmt.Println(doc.Document.Name)    // my-app

for _, p := range doc.Packages {
    fmt.Println(p.Name, p.Version, p.PURL())
}

Parse auto-detects the format. Detect returns just the type without a full parse, scanning JSON keys, the XML root, or the tag-value document header.

Packages with different document IDs or PURLs remain separate, even when their names and versions match. AddPackage replaces an entry only when its name, version, document ID, and set of PURLs match. Package.PURL() returns the first PURL; Package.ExternalRefs retains all declared references.

switch sbom.Detect(data) {
case sbom.TypeCycloneDX:
case sbom.TypeSPDX:
}

Generating

Build an *sbom.SBOM, populate Document and Packages, then Encode:

s := sbom.New(sbom.TypeCycloneDX)
s.Document = sbom.Document{
    Name:      "my-app",
    Namespace: "https://example.com/my-app",
    Component: sbom.Component{
        Type:              "application",
        Name:              "my-app",
        Version:           "1.2.3",
        LicenseExpression: "MIT",
        LicenseNames:      []string{"Additional Project Terms"},
        ExtractedLicenses: []sbom.ExtractedLicense{{
            Name: "LICENSE.custom",
            Text: "Custom license text",
        }},
    },
    Creators:  []sbom.Creator{{Type: "Tool", Name: "my-tool-1.0"}},
}
s.AddPackage(sbom.Package{
    Name: "lodash", Version: "4.17.21", LicenseDeclared: "MIT",
    ExternalRefs: []sbom.ExternalRef{{Type: "purl", Locator: "pkg:npm/lodash@4.17.21"}},
})

sbom.Encode(os.Stdout, s, sbom.FormatCycloneDXJSON)
sbom.Encode(os.Stdout, s, sbom.FormatSPDXJSON)

Relationships

Both parsers normalise dependency edges to sbom.RelDependsOn, SPDX DEPENDENCY_OF edges included with their direction reversed, and SPDX's document-to-root link to sbom.RelDescribes. ClassifyScope walks that graph to tag each package as a direct or transitive dependency of the document's root:

doc, _ := sbom.Parse(data)
scope := doc.ClassifyScope()
for _, p := range doc.Packages {
    switch scope[p.ID] {
    case sbom.ScopeDirect:
    case sbom.ScopeTransitive:
    default:
        // root, or a flat-list SBOM with no dependency graph
    }
}

ClassifyScope returns nil when the document has no dependency graph at all, so callers can hide a scope filter rather than showing every package as unclassified.

When the document declares its root, through an SPDX DESCRIBES edge or the CycloneDX metadata.component bom-ref (kept as Document.Component.ID), and that root has dependency edges, it is the only root. Otherwise roots are inferred as the nodes that have dependencies but no dependents. That is the project for lock files that list it, such as package-lock.json, Cargo.lock and uv.lock. Lock files such as poetry.lock list only dependencies, so the inferred roots would be the top-level dependencies. For packages syft records as coming from poetry.lock, pdm.lock, pnpm-lock.yaml or a yarn v1 yarn.lock (the syft:location:0:path property in CycloneDX, PackageSourceInfo in SPDX), those are classified as direct instead, as is any package from such a lock file that no edge names, such as a dependency without dependencies of its own, as long as the lock file has edges at all. Other generators' lock-file SBOMs that don't link the project may still have top-level dependencies inferred as roots.

Roots returns the root IDs and whether the document declared all of them, so a caller can tell the project apart from an inferred root:

ids, declared := doc.Roots()

Ancestors

Package.Ancestors records the components a package was derived from, such as the upstream project of a fork. CycloneDX JSON and XML read and write these as pedigree.ancestors:

s.AddPackage(sbom.Package{
    Name: "@plotly/d3", Version: "3.8.2",
    ExternalRefs: []sbom.ExternalRef{{Type: "purl", Locator: "pkg:npm/%40plotly/d3@3.8.2"}},
    Ancestors: []sbom.Ancestor{{Name: "d3/d3", PURL: "pkg:github/d3/d3"}},
})

Leave Version empty when only the upstream repository is known. Ancestors are provenance, not installed packages: they never appear in Packages or create relationships. They are written without a bom-ref. SPDX output does not include them.

Supported formats

SPDX file, snippet, annotation, and extracted-license records are not included in the parsed model. YAML parsing is not supported.

Why not protobom?

protobom is the OpenSSF normaliser and covers every serialisation. It's pure Go (no cgo) but importing pkg/reader adds about 21 indirect modules including google.golang.org/protobuf, sigs.k8s.io/release-utils, logrus, tablewriter, and a handful of terminal-colour libraries that have no business in a parser. This module has zero dependencies and the field mappings were already worked out in the Ruby gem, so for tools that just need the package list it's a smaller surface to audit. If you need full spec coverage, use protobom.

Benchmarks

go test -bench . -benchmem

On an M1 Pro, Parse runs at roughly 100-165 MB/s; the 3 MB syft-generated nginx.spdx.json (151 packages) parses in about 18 ms. Detect is sub-microsecond on the same file.

License

MIT.