by Reece Jones
Serialise++ is an easy-to-use library for efficient, generic serialisation of C++ values into bytes. It uses a serialisation method inspired by Cap'n Proto, to enable serialisation/deserialisation without copying large amount of data between C++ values and bytes buffers. But unlike Cap'n Proto and similar libraries, Serialise++ enables definition of serialisable types in C++, with no extra code generation required!
- Supported types:
- Integers
- Floating point numbers
- Booleans
- Static arrays
- Dynamic arrays
- Tuples
- Optionals
- Variants
- User-defined structs
- Extensible serialisation for custom types
- On-the-fly serialisation and deserialisation - no data duplication!
- Fully contained within C++ (no separate schema definition, no code generation)
- Complete
constexprsupport
(Support for more types is likely to come in the future.)
To achieve efficient serialisation/deserialisation while maintaining a simple serialisation format, Serialise++ is designed for fairly small messages. Currently there is a hard limit of ~4GB of variable-sized data. This limit may be expanded if a sufficient need for larger messages is found.
That said, Serialise++ is not designed for situations where literally every bit of serialised data or every CPU cycle spent serialising/deserialising is critical. Some efficiency and performance must be forgone in exchange for generality, flexibility, and usability.
Serialise++ does not support "optional" fields like certain popular serialisation libraries do to enable backward-compatibility of message types. This is a deliberate design decision to allow a simple serialisation format.
- C++20
- Platform with 8-bit bytes
- [For floating point support] Platform with IEEE-754 floats
- [For CMake build] CMake 3.22 or newer
- SimpleTest v1.0.0 or compatible
Please see ProgrammingGuide.md for detailed usage information and code examples.
There are a few methods of importing Serialise++ into your project, depending on your desired build process.
Please see Importing.md for details.
Please see SerialisationFormat.md for details on how C++ values are represented as bytes.
The library has unit tests made with SimpleTest. The test code is contained in test/ and the CMake target is SerialisePPTest. The target will only be built if the CMake variable SERIALISEPP_BUILD_TEST is set to ON.
The library has a suite of benchmarks to evaluate serialisation and deserialisation performance. The benchmark code is contained in benchmark/ and the CMake target is SerialisePPBenchmark. The target will only be built if the CMake variable SERIALISEPP_BUILD_BENCHMARK is set to ON.