CHANGELOG | API | current Break Version:

[com.taoensso/nippy "3.2.0"] ; See CHANGELOG for details

See here if to help support my open-source work, thanks! - Peter Taoussanis

Nippy: the fastest serialization library for Clojure

Clojure's rich data types are awesome. And its reader allows you to take your data just about anywhere. But the reader can be painfully slow when you've got a lot of data to crunch (like when you're serializing to a database).

Nippy is an attempt to provide a reliable, high-performance drop-in alternative to the reader. Used by the Carmine Redis client, the Faraday DynamoDB client, PigPen, Onyx and others.

Features

Small, simple all-Clojure library.
Terrific performance (the fastest for Clojure that I'm aware of).
Comprehesive support for all standard data types.
Easily extendable to custom data types.
Java's Serializable fallback when available.
Reader-fallback for all other types (including tagged literals)
Full test coverage for every supported type.
Fully pluggable compression, including built-in high-performance LZ4 compressor.
Fully pluggable encryption, including built-in high-strength AES128 enabled with a single :password [:salted "my-password"] option.
Utils for easy integration into 3rd-party tools/libraries.

Getting started

Add the necessary dependency to your project:

Leiningen: [com.taoensso/nippy "3.2.0"] ; or
deps.edn:   com.taoensso/nippy {:mvn/version "3.2.0"}

And setup your namespace imports:

(ns my-ns (:require [taoensso.nippy :as nippy]))

De/serializing

As an example of what it can do, let's take a look at Nippy's own reference stress data:

nippy/stress-data
=>
{:nil                   nil
 :true                  true
 :false                 false
 :boxed-false (Boolean. false)

 :char      \ಬ
 :str-short "ಬಾ ಇಲ್ಲಿ ಸಂಭವಿಸ"
 :str-long  (apply str (range 1000))
 :kw        :keyword
 :kw-ns     ::keyword
 :kw-long   (keyword
              (apply str "kw" (range 1000))
              (apply str "kw" (range 1000)))

 :sym       'foo
 :sym-ns    'foo/bar
 :sym-long   (symbol
               (apply str "sym" (range 1000))
               (apply str "sym" (range 1000)))

 :regex     #"^(https?:)?//(www\?|\?)?"

 :many-small-numbers  (vec (range 200))
 :many-small-keywords (->> (java.util.Locale/getISOLanguages)
                           (mapv keyword))
 :many-small-strings  (->> (java.util.Locale/getISOCountries)
                           (mapv #(.getDisplayCountry (java.util.Locale. "en" %))))

 :queue        (enc/queue [:a :b :c :d :e :f :g])
 :queue-empty  (enc/queue)
 :sorted-set   (sorted-set 1 2 3 4 5)
 :sorted-map   (sorted-map :b 2 :a 1 :d 4 :c 3)

 :list         (list 1 2 3 4 5 (list 6 7 8 (list 9 10 '(()))))
 :vector       [1 2 3 4 5 [6 7 8 [9 10 [[]]]]]
 :map          {:a 1 :b 2 :c 3 :d {:e 4 :f {:g 5 :h 6 :i 7 :j {{} {}}}}}
 :set          #{1 2 3 4 5 #{6 7 8 #{9 10 #{#{}}}}}
 :meta         (with-meta {:a :A} {:metakey :metaval})
 :nested       [#{{1 [:a :b] 2 [:c :d] 3 [:e :f]} [#{{}}] #{:a :b}}
                #{{1 [:a :b] 2 [:c :d] 3 [:e :f]} [#{{}}] #{:a :b}}
                [1 [1 2 [1 2 3 [1 2 3 4 [1 2 3 4 5]]]]]]

 :lazy-seq       (repeatedly 1000 rand)
 :lazy-seq-empty (map identity '())

 :byte         (byte   16)
 :short        (short  42)
 :integer      (int    3)
 :long         (long   3)
 :bigint       (bigint 31415926535897932384626433832795)

 :float        (float  3.14)
 :double       (double 3.14)
 :bigdec       (bigdec 3.1415926535897932384626433832795)

 :ratio        22/7
 :uri          (URI. "https://clojure.org/reference/data_structures")
 :uuid         (java.util.UUID/randomUUID)
 :date         (java.util.Date.)

 ;;; JVM 8+
 :time-instant  (java.time.Instant/now)
 :time-duration (java.time.Duration/ofSeconds 100 100)
 :time-period   (java.time.Period/of 1 1 1)

 :bytes         (byte-array [(byte 1) (byte 2) (byte 3)])
 :objects       (object-array [1 "two" {:data "data"}])

 :stress-record (StressRecord. "data")
 :stress-type   (StressType.   "data")

 ;; Serializable
 :throwable    (Throwable. "Yolo")
 :exception    (try (/ 1 0) (catch Exception e e))
 :ex-info      (ex-info "ExInfo" {:data "data"})}

Serialize it:

(def frozen-stress-data (nippy/freeze nippy/stress-data))
=> #<byte[] [B@3253bcf3>

Deserialize it:

(nippy/thaw frozen-stress-data)
=> {:bytes        (byte-array [(byte 1) (byte 2) (byte 3)])
    :nil          nil
    :boolean      true
    <...> }

Couldn't be simpler!

See also the lower-level freeze-to-out! and thaw-from-in! fns for operating on DataOutput and DataInput types directly.

Encryption

Nippy also gives you dead simple data encryption. Add a single option to your usual freeze/thaw calls like so:

(nippy/freeze nippy/stress-data {:password [:salted "my-password"]}) ; Encrypt
(nippy/thaw   <encrypted-data>  {:password [:salted "my-password"]}) ; Decrypt

There's two default forms of encryption on offer: :salted and :cached. Each of these makes carefully-chosen trade-offs and is suited to one of two common use cases. See the aes128-encryptor API docs for a detailed explanation of why/when you'd want one or the other.

Custom types

(defrecord MyType [data])

(nippy/extend-freeze MyType :my-type/foo ; A unique (namespaced) type identifier
  [x data-output]
  (.writeUTF data-output (:data x)))

(nippy/extend-thaw :my-type/foo ; Same type id
  [data-input]
  (MyType. (.readUTF data-input)))

(nippy/thaw (nippy/freeze (MyType. "Joe"))) => #taoensso.nippy.MyType{:data "Joe"}

Performance

Nippy is currently the fastest serialization library for Clojure that I'm aware of, and offers roundtrip times between ~10x and ~15x faster than Clojure's tools.reader.edn, with a ~40% smaller output size.

Benchmark code is included with this repo, and can be easily run in your own environment.

Contacting me / contributions

Please use the project's GitHub issues page for all questions, ideas, etc. Pull requests welcome. See the project's GitHub contributors page for a list of contributors.

Otherwise, you can reach me at Taoensso.com. Happy hacking!

- Peter Taoussanis

ptaoussanis / nippy