FlatBuffers: FlatBuffers
FlatBuffers is an efficient cross platform serialization library for C++, C#, C, Go, Java, Kotlin, JavaScript, Lobster, Lua, TypeScript, PHP, Python, Rust and Swift. It was originally created at Google for game development and other performance-critical applications.
It is available as Open Source on GitHub under the Apache license, v2 (see LICENSE.txt).
FlatBuffers is an efficient cross platform serialization library for C++, C#, C, Go, Java, Kotlin, JavaScript, Lobster, Lua, TypeScript, PHP, Python, Rust and Swift. It was originally created at Google for game development and other performance-critical applications.
It is available as Open Source on GitHub under the Apache license, v2 (see LICENSE.txt).
Protocol Buffers is indeed relatively similar to FlatBuffers, with the primary difference being that FlatBuffers does not need a parsing/ unpacking step to a secondary representation before you can access data, often coupled with per-object memory allocation. The code is an order of magnitude bigger, too. Protocol Buffers has no optional text import/export.
But all the cool kids use JSON!
JSON is very readable (which is why we use it as our optional text format) and very convenient when used together with dynamically typed languages (such as JavaScript). When serializing data from statically typed languages, however, JSON not only has the obvious drawback of runtime inefficiency, but also forces you to write more code to access data (counterintuitively) due to its dynamic-typing serialization system. In this context, it is only a better choice for systems that have very little to no information ahead of time about what data needs to be stored.
If you do need to store data that doesn't fit a schema, FlatBuffers also offers a schema-less (self-describing) version!
Read more about the "why" of FlatBuffers in the white paper.
chubbymaggie/fast: Flat Abstract Syntax Tree
This project adopts flatbuffers, a one-dimensional array to represent the ASTs as a binary file, and demonstates the improved efficiency and applicability to software development.
But all the cool kids use JSON!
JSON is very readable (which is why we use it as our optional text format) and very convenient when used together with dynamically typed languages (such as JavaScript). When serializing data from statically typed languages, however, JSON not only has the obvious drawback of runtime inefficiency, but also forces you to write more code to access data (counterintuitively) due to its dynamic-typing serialization system. In this context, it is only a better choice for systems that have very little to no information ahead of time about what data needs to be stored.
If you do need to store data that doesn't fit a schema, FlatBuffers also offers a schema-less (self-describing) version!
Read more about the "why" of FlatBuffers in the white paper.
chubbymaggie/fast: Flat Abstract Syntax Tree
This project adopts flatbuffers, a one-dimensional array to represent the ASTs as a binary file, and demonstates the improved efficiency and applicability to software development.
