Benchmark (FIX tag 219)

charFIX 4.2

Benchmark (tag 219) is a char field defined in FIX 4.2. It appears in 1 message type, always optionally. It is an enumerated field with 9 defined values.

At a glance

Tag: 219
Name: Benchmark
Datatype: char
Dialects: FIX 4.2
Messages: 1
Valid values: 9

What the specification says

For Fixed Income. Identifies the benchmark (e.g. used in conjunction with the SpreadToBenchmark field).

Descriptions are quoted from the FIX Orchestra sources under the Apache 2.0 licence.

A real message using tag 219

IOI · FIX 4.2

Tag	Field	Wire value	Meaning
8	BeginString	FIX.4.2
9	BodyLength	106
35	MsgType	6	Indication of Interest
49	SenderCompID	BOARTEAM
56	TargetCompID	COUNTERPARTY
34	MsgSeqNum	2
52	SendingTime	20240101-12:00:00.000
23	IOIid	EXAMPLE
28	IOITransType	C	Cancel
55	Symbol	EUR/USD
54	Side	1	Buy
27	IOIShares	L	Large
219	Benchmark	1	CURVE
10	CheckSum	255

Edit and decode it yourself

Shown with | separators for readability. On the wire FIX uses SOH (0x01), an invisible control byte — and because BodyLength and CheckSum are computed over the actual bytes, the two forms have different checksums. Both are valid and both decode here.

Open in the full decoder →

Generated from the FIX 4.2 dictionary and verified at build time: it parses and validates with no issues. Open the decoder to try your own message.

Valid values

A value outside this list is not a parse error — the message still decodes — but validate() reports it as validate/value-not-in-enum.

Value	Meaning	Symbolic name
1	CURVE	CURVE
2	5-YR	FiveYR
3	OLD-5	OLD5
4	10-YR	TenYR
5	OLD-10	OLD10
6	30-YR	ThirtyYR
7	OLD-30	OLD30
8	3-MO-LIBOR	ThreeMOLIBOR
9	6-MO-LIBOR	SixMOLIBOR

Where tag 219 appears

Requiredness is a property of the message, not of the field: the same tag can be optional in one message and conditionally required in another.

Message	MsgType	Requiredness	Where in the message
IOI	6	Optional	directly on the message body

Wire format

A single character. Most char fields are enumerated, so the value is one of a fixed set rather than arbitrary text. @boarteam/fix keeps the value as a string and, for enumerated fields, reports validate/value-not-in-enum when it is not a defined value.

Read tag 219 in TypeScript

decode.tsts

import { createFixEngine } from "@boarteam/fix";import { dictionary } from "@boarteam/fix-dict-fix42";const fix = createFixEngine(dictionary);const { message, issues } = fix.parse(raw);const benchmark = message.fields[219]?.raw;// e.g. "1" — CURVE// The dictionary also carries the labels:const label = fix.dictionary  .fieldByTag(219)  ?.enumValues?.find((e) => e.value === benchmark)  ?.description;

Decode this in your own code

The same engine that produced the decoded example above is an Apache-2.0 npm package with zero runtime dependencies. It runs in Node and in the browser, and parse() returns problems as data instead of throwing.

npm i @boarteam/fix @boarteam/fix-dict-fix42

Try the decoder Source on GitHub