cppack

A modern (c++17 required) implementation of the msgpack spec.

Msgpack is a binary serialization specification. It allows you to save and load application objects like classes and structs over networks, to files, and between programs and even different languages.

Check out this blog for my rational creating this library.

Features

• Fast and compact
• Full test coverage
• Easy to use
• Automatic type handling
• Open source MIT license
• Easy error handling

Single Header only template library

Want to use this library? Just #include the header and you're good to go. Its less than 1000 lines of code.

Cereal style packaging

Easily pack objects into byte arrays using a pack free function:

struct Person {
  std::string name;
  uint16_t age;
  std::vector<std::string> aliases;

  template<class T>
  void msgpack(T &pack) {
    pack(name, age, aliases);
  }
};

int main() {
    auto person = Person{"John", 22, {"Ripper", "Silverhand"}};

    auto data = msgpack::pack(person); // Pack your object
    auto john = msgpack::unpack<Person>(data.data()); // Unpack it
}

More Examples

Roadmap

• Support for extension types
  • The msgpack spec allows for additional types to be enumerated as Extensions. If reasonable use cases come about for this feature then it may be added.
• Name/value pairs
  • The msgpack spec uses the 'map' type differently than this library. This library implements maps in which key/value pairs must all have the same value types.
• Endian conversion shortcuts
  • On platforms that already hold types in big endian, the serialization could be optimized using type traits.