PatternBuffer

Energizing object serialization across languages and platforms!

Purpose

The main goal of PatternBuffers is to make object serialization and deserialization as easy as this:

// Serialize a thing
byte[] bytes = myPatternBuffer.Energize(thing1);

// Deserialize a thing
Thing thing2 = (Thing)myPatternBuffer.Energize(bytes);

Use Cases

What are PatternBuffers good for? Like, a lot!

Sending and receiving real-time game data over a network socket
Reading or writing save games to/from local device storage
Reading and writing structured static metadata (don't use JSON, ew)
Minimizing the footprint of objects stored in memory or persistent storage
And more!

How to Use PatternBuffers

Here is how to use PatternBuffers, in a nutshell:

Define! -- Describe your objects in the PatternBuffer schema language.
Generate! -- Use a PatternBuffer compiler to generate all the serialization code for the objects defined in your schema.
Energize! -- Issue one method call to serialize or deserialize your data quickly (it's fast) and economically (it's small).
Customize! -- Not happy with the generated code? Branch and change the compiler code to suit your needs, in the language you are comfortable with.

PatternBuffer Features

More specifically, PatternBuffer offers these features:

A schema language for defining your types
16 primitive types, in addition to lists, sets, maps, and enums
Strict typing to ensure clarity, and to integrate with IDE code completion features
Object inheritance and polymorphism for maximum expressiveness
Optional compact primitives to minimize impact on resources like memory, disk space, bandwidth
Extremely efficient serialization code; does not use reflection
Modestly sized binaries
Compilers written in a variety of languages
Compiler hints to help customize compiler output

Building

PatternBuffers are implemented across different languages and platforms. This means there are as many build processes as target languages. See the README for each specific language in the Languages source folder.

Usage

For information on how to use PatternBuffers, see the PatternBuffer Documentation Wiki page.

Contributions

Feel free to fork and PR your changes for review. Useful enhancements accepted as long as they come with unit tests, comments, and clean code.

Contact

The PatternBuffer repository was written and is maintained by Todd Ogrin (toddogrin@gmail.com).

tungcheng / PatternBuffer