bitsery/README.md

Bitsery

Header only C++ binary serialization library. It is designed around the networking requirements for multiplayer real-time fast paced games as first person shooters.

All cross-platform requirements are enforced at compile time, so serialized data do not store any run-time type information and is as small as possible.

bitsery is looking for your feedback.

Features

• Cross-platform compatible
• 2-in-1 declarative control flow, same code for serialization and deserialization.
• Configurable endianess support.
• Advanced serialization features like value ranges and entrophy encoding.
• Easy to extend for types that requires different serialization and deserialization logic (e.g. pointers, or geometry compression).
• Error checking at runtime on deserialization, and asserts on serialization errors.

Example

#include <bitsery/bitsery.h>

enum class MyEnum:uint16_t { V1,V2,V3 };
struct MyStruct {
    uint32_t i;
    MyEnum e;
    std::vector<float> fs;
};

//define how object should be serialized/deserialized
SERIALIZE(MyStruct) {
    return s.
            value4(o.i).
            value2(o.e).
            container4(o.fs, 10);
};

using namespace bitsery;

int main() {
    //set some random data
    MyStruct data{8941, MyEnum::V2, {15.0f, -8.5f, 0.045f}};
    MyStruct res{};

    //create serializer
    //1) create buffer to store data
    std::vector<uint8_t> buffer;
    //2) create buffer writer that is able to write bytes or bits to buffer
    BufferWriter bw{buffer};
    //3) create serializer
    Serializer<BufferWriter> ser{bw};

    //serialize object, can also be invoked like this: serialize(ser, data)
    ser.object(data);

    //flush to buffer, before creating buffer reader
    bw.flush();

    //create deserializer
    //1) create buffer reader
    BufferReader br{buffer};
    //2) create deserializer
    Deserializer<BufferReader> des{br};

    //deserialize same object, can also be invoked like this: serialize(des, data)
    des.object(res);
    assert(data.fs == res.fs && data.i == res.i && data.e == res.e);
}

Todo list

Support wider range for underlying buffer value type for BufferWriter and BufferReader (currently must be unsigned 1byte, e.g. uint8_t).

Delta serialization and deserialization is in progress.

Platforms

This library was tested on

• Windows: Visual Studio 2015, MinGW (gcc 5.2)
• Linux: GCC 5.4, GCC 6.2, Clang 3.9
• OS X Mavericks: AppleClang 8