The parse, validate, load, and stringify pipeline.
Processing an Internet Object document is defined as a pipeline of four stages. Each stage has a clear input and output, so implementations behave consistently.
text ──parse──▶ document tree ──validate──▶ checked tree ──load──▶ values
◀─stringify── valuesInput: UTF-8 text. Output: a document tree (header, sections, records, values).
Parsing checks only syntax — that the text is well-formed. It does not consult any schema. Syntax errors are produced here (see Error Model).
Input: the document tree + a schema. Output: the same tree, with each value checked.
Validation applies the schema: types, constraints (min, maxLen, pattern, choices, …), optionality, and nullability. Validation errors are produced here. With no schema, data is accepted structurally and mapped to positional keys.
Input: the validated tree. Output: in-memory values.
Loading converts checked values into their final representations (numbers, booleans, dates, byte data, nested objects/arrays), applying defaults for omitted fields.
The inverse of the pipeline: in-memory values are serialized back to Internet Object text, honoring schema hints such as a number's format or a string's quote style. A value that is loaded and then stringified SHOULD round-trip to an equivalent document.
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