Bitsery

Header only C++ binary serialization library. It is designed around the networking requirements for real-time data delivery, especially for games.

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

bitsery is looking for your feedback on gitter

Features

• Cross-platform compatible.
• Optimized for speed and space.
• No code generation required: no IDL or metadata, just use your types directly.
• Configurable runtime error checking on deserialization.
• Can read/write from any source: stream (file, network stream. etc... ), or buffer (vector, c-array, etc...).
• Don't pay for what you don't use! - customize your serialization via extensions. Some notable extensions allow:
  • fine-grained bit-level serialization control.
  • forward/backward compatibility for your types.
  • smart and raw pointers with allocators support and customizable runtime polymorphism.
• Easily extendable for any type.
• Allows brief (similar to cereal) or/and verbose syntax for better serialization control.
• Configurable endianness support.
• No macros.

Why use bitsery

Look at the numbers and features list, and decide yourself.

library	data size	serialize	deserialize
bitsery	6913B	959ms	927ms
bitsery_compress	4213B	1282ms	1115ms
boost	11037B	9826ms	8313ms
cereal	10413B	6324ms	5698ms
flatbuffers	14924B	5129ms	2142ms
protobuf	10018B	11966ms	13919ms
yas	10463B	1908ms	1217ms

benchmarked on Ubuntu with GCC 8.3.0, more details can be found here

If still not convinced read more in library motivation section.

Usage example

#include <bitsery/bitsery.h>
#include <bitsery/adapter/buffer.h>
#include <bitsery/traits/vector.h>

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

template <typename S>
void serialize(S& s, MyStruct& o) {
    s.value4b(o.i);
    s.value2b(o.e);
    s.container4b(o.fs, 10);
}

using namespace bitsery;

using Buffer = std::vector<uint8_t>;
using OutputAdapter = OutputBufferAdapter<Buffer>;
using InputAdapter = InputBufferAdapter<Buffer>;

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

    Buffer buffer;

    auto writtenSize = quickSerialization<OutputAdapter>(buffer, data);
    auto state = quickDeserialization<InputAdapter>({buffer.begin(), writtenSize}, res);

    assert(state.first == ReaderError::NoError && state.second);
    assert(data.fs == res.fs && data.i == res.i && data.e == res.e);
}

For more details go directly to quick start tutorial.

How to use it

This documentation comprises these parts:

• Tutorial - getting started.
• Reference section - all the details.

documentation is in progress, most parts are empty, but contributions are welcome.

Requirements

Works with C++11 compiler, no additional dependencies, include <bitsery/bitsery.h> and you're done.

some bitsery extensions might require higher C++ standard (e.g. StdVariant)

Platforms

This library was tested on

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

There is a patch that allows using bitsery with non-fully compatible C++11 compilers.

• CentOS 7 with gcc 4.8.2.

License

bitsery is licensed under the MIT license.