FOUNDATION FOR INTELLIGENT
PHYSICAL AGENTS
FIPA ACL Message
Representation
in String Specification
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Document title |
FIPA ACL
Message Representation in String Specification |
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Document number |
XC00070E |
Document source |
FIPA Agent Management |
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Document status |
Experimental |
Date of this status |
2000/07/31 |
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Supersedes |
OC00024 |
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Contact |
fab@fipa.org |
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Change history |
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2000/04/17 |
Separated out from specification OC00024 |
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2000/06/06 |
Made ready for Experimental status |
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2000/06/13 |
FAB editorial and consistency changes |
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2000/07/23 |
Changed :content-language-encoding slot name to :encoding as per recommendation of TC C |
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2000/07/31 |
Approved for Experimental; changed AID to agent-identifier in the syntax |
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2000/08/01 |
Changes made by Fabio |
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© 2000 Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents - http://www.fipa.org/
Geneva, Switzerland
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Notice |
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Use of the technologies described in this specification may infringe
patents, copyrights or other intellectual property rights of FIPA Members and
non-members. Nothing in this specification should be construed as granting
permission to use any of the technologies described. Anyone planning to make
use of technology covered by the intellectual property rights of others
should first obtain permission from the holder(s) of the rights. FIPA
strongly encourages anyone implementing
any part of this specification to determine first whether part(s)
sought to be implemented are covered by the intellectual property of others,
and, if so, to obtain appropriate licenses or other permission from the
holder(s) of such intellectual property prior to implementation. This
specification is subject to change without notice. Neither FIPA nor any of
its Members accept any responsibility whatsoever for damages or liability,
direct or consequential, which may result from the use of this specification. |
Foreword
The Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents
(FIPA) is an international organization that is dedicated to promoting the
industry of intelligent agents by openly developing specifications supporting
interoperability among agents and agent-based applications. This occurs through
open collaboration among its member organizations, which are companies and
universities that are active in the field of agents. FIPA makes the results of
its activities available to all interested parties and intends to contribute
its results to the appropriate formal standards bodies.
The members of FIPA are individually and
collectively committed to open competition in the development of agent-based
applications, services and equipment. Membership in FIPA is open to any
corporation and individual firm, partnership, governmental body or
international organization without restriction. In particular, members are not
bound to implement or use specific agent-based standards, recommendations and
FIPA specifications by virtue of their participation in FIPA.
The FIPA specifications are developed through
direct involvement of the FIPA membership. The status of a specification can be
either Preliminary, Experimental, Standard, Deprecated or Obsolete. More detail about the process of
specification may be found in the FIPA Procedures for Technical Work. A
complete overview of the FIPA specifications and their current status may be
found in the FIPA List of Specifications. A list of terms and abbreviations
used in the FIPA specifications may be found in the FIPA Glossary.
FIPA is a non-profit association registered in
Geneva, Switzerland. As of January 2000, the 56 members of FIPA represented 17 countries worldwide. Further information
about FIPA as an organization, membership information, FIPA specifications and
upcoming meetings may be found at http://www.fipa.org/.
Contents
2.5 Notes on the
Grammar Rules
This document is part
of the FIPA specifications and deals with message transportation between
inter-operating agents. This document also forms part of the FIPA Agent
Management Specification [FIPA00023] and contains specifications for:
·
Syntactic
representation of ACL in string form.
|
Grammar
rule component |
Example |
|
Terminal tokens are enclosed in double quotes |
"(" |
|
Non-terminals are written as capitalised identifiers |
Expression |
|
Square brackets denote an optional construct |
[ "," OptionalArg ] |
|
Vertical bars denote an alternative between choices |
Integer | Float |
|
Asterisk denotes zero or more repetitions of the
preceding expression |
Digit* |
|
Plus denotes one or more repetitions of the preceding
expression |
Alpha+ |
|
Parentheses are used to group expansions |
( A | B )* |
|
Productions are written with the non-terminal name on the
left-hand side, expansion on the right-hand side and terminated by a full
stop |
ANonTerminal = "terminal". |
Table 1: EBNF Rules
The name assigned to
this component is:
fipa.acl.rep.string.std
ACLCommunicativeAct =
Message.
Message = "("
MessageType
MessageSlot* ")".
MessageType = See [FIPA00037]
MessageSlot =
":sender" AgentIdentifier
| ":receiver"
AgentIdentifierSet
| ":content" (
Expression )
|
":reply-with" Expression
| ":reply-by"
DateTime
|
":in-reply-to" Expression
| ":reply-to"
AgentIdentifierSet
| ":language"
Expression
| ":encoding"
Expression
| ":ontology"
Expression
| ":protocol"
Word
|
":conversation-id" Expression
| UserDefinedSlot
Expression.
UserDefinedSlot = Word[1].
Expression = Word
| String
| Number
| DateTime
| "("
Expression* ")".
AgentIdentifier = "("
"agent-identifier"
":name" word
[ ":addresses" URLSequence ]
[ ":resolvers" AgentIdentifierSequence ]
( UserDefinedSlot Expression )* ")".
AgentIdentifierSequence = "(" "sequence"
AgentIdentifier* ")".
AgentIdentifierSet
= "(" "set"
AgentIdentifier* ")".
URLSequence = "("
"sequence" URL* ")".
DateTime = DateTimeToken.
URL =
See [RFC2396]
Some slightly different rules apply for the generation of lexical tokens. Lexical tokens use the same notation as above, with the exceptions noted in Table 2.
|
Lexical rule component |
Example |
|
Square brackets
enclose a character set |
[
"a", "b", "c" ] |
|
Dash in a character
set denotes a range |
[
"a” – "z" ] |
|
Tilde denotes the
complement of a character set if it is the first character |
[
~ "(", ")" ] |
|
Post-fix
question-mark operator denotes that the preceding lexical expression is
optional (may appear zero or one times) |
[
"0" – "9" ] ? [ "0" – "9" ] |
Table 2: Lexical Rules
All white space, tabs,
carriage returns and line feeds between tokens should be skipped by the lexical
analyser.
Word = [~ "\0x00" –
"\0x20", "(", ")", "#", "0" –
"9", "-", "@"]
[~ "\0x00" – "\0x20",
"(", ")"]*.
String = StringLiteral |
ByteLengthEncodedString.
StringLiteral = "\"" ([ ~
"\"" ] | "\\\"")* "\"".
ByteLengthEncodedString = "#" Digit+ "\""
<byte sequence>.
Number = Integer | Float.
URL = See
[RFC2396]
DateTimeToken = "+" ?
Year Month Day "T"
Hour Minute Second MilliSecond
( TypeDesignator ? ).
Year = Digit Digit Digit Digit.
Month = Digit Digit.
Day = Digit Digit.
Hour =
Digit Digit.
Minute =
Digit Digit.
Second =
Digit Digit.
MilliSecond =
Digit Digit Digit.
TypeDesignator = AlphaCharacter.
AlphaCharacter = [ "a" – "z" ] |
[ "A" – "Z" ].
Digit = [ "0"
– "9" ].
Sign = [ "+" ,
"-" ] .
Integer = Sign? Digit+.
Dot = [ "." ].
Float = Sign? FloatMantissa
FloatExponent?
| Sign? Digit+
FloatExponent
FloatMantissa = Digit+ Dot Digit*
| Digit* Dot Digit+
FloatExponent = Exponent Sign? Digit+
Exponent = [ "e", "E" ]
Time tokens are based on [ISO8601] with extensions for relative time and millisecond durations. Time expressions may be absolute or relative to the current time. Relative times are distinguished by the character + appearing as the first character in the construct. If no type designator is given, the local time zone is used. The type designator for UTC is the character Z. UTC is preferred to prevent time zone ambiguities. Note that years must be encoded in four digits.
As examples, 8:30am on April 15th, 1996 local time would be encoded as:
19960415T083000000
The same time in UTC would be:
19960415T083000000Z
While one hour, 15 minutes and 35 milliseconds from now would be:
+00000000T011500035
1. The standard definitions for integers and
floating point are assumed.
2. All keywords are case-insensitive.
3. A length encoded string is a context sensitive
lexical token. Its meaning is as follows: the message envelope of the token is
everything from the leading # to the separator " inclusive. Between the markers of the message
envelope is a decimal number with at least one digit. This digit then
determines that exactly that number
of 8-bit bytes are to be consumed as part of the token, without restriction. It
is a lexical error for less than that number of bytes to be available.
4. Note that not all implementations of the ACC
(see [FIPA00067]) will support the transparent transmission of 8-bit
characters. It is the responsibility of the agent to ensure, by reference to
internal API of the ACC, that a given channel is able to faithfully transmit
the chosen message encoding.
5. A well-formed message will obey the grammar, and
in addition, will have at most one of each of the slots. It is an error to
attempt to send a message which is not well formed. Further rules on
well-formed messages may be stated or implied the operational definitions of
the values of slots as these are further developed.
6. Strings encoded in accordance with [ISO2022] may
contain characters which are otherwise not permitted in the definition of Word. These characters are ESC (0x1B), SO (0x0E) and SI (0x0F). This is due to the complexity that would result from
including the full [ISO2022] grammar in the above EBNF description. Hence,
despite the basic description above, a word may contain any well-formed
[ISO2022] encoded character, other (representations of) parentheses, spaces, or
the # character. Note that parentheses may
legitimately occur as part of a well
formed escape sequence; the preceding restriction on characters in a word
refers only to the encoded characters, not the form of the encoding.
7. The format for time tokens is defined in section
2.4, Representation of Time.
8. The format for an AID is defined in [FIPA00023].
[FIPA00023] FIPA Agent Management
Specification. Foundation for Intelligent Physical
Agents, 2000. http://www.fipa.org/specs/fipa00023/
[FIPA00037] FIPA Communicative Act Library Specification. Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents, 2000. http://www.fipa.org/specs/fipa00037/
[FIPA00067] FIPA Agent Message
Transport Service Specification. Foundation for
Intelligent Physical Agents, 2000. http://www.fipa.org/specs/fipa00067/
[FIPA00075] FIPA Agent Message Transport Protocol for
IIOP Specification. Foundation for Intelligent Physical
Agents, 2000.
http://www.fipa.org/specs/fipa00075/
[ISO2022] Information Technology, Character Code
Structure and Extension Techniques. International Standards Organisation, 1994.
http://www.iso.ch/cate/d22747.html
[ISO8601] Date Elements and Interchange Formats,
Information Interchange-Representation of Dates and Times. International
Standards Organisation, 1998.
http://www.iso.ch/cate/d15903.html
[RFC2396] Uniform Resource Identifiers: Generic Syntax. Request for Comments, 1998. http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2396.txt