array-buffer-serializer

Similar (without fixed length data representation and some other minor differences) as CBOR or MessagePack, allows to encode an object into bytes before transmission via WebRTC or WebSocket and decode it back when received. This is very useful for network bandwidth when you need to send data to one or more recipients frequently. Works in both: browser and node.

Some characters of the Latin-1 Supplement are reserved for encoding values: C0 (U+00C0) - E3 (U+00E7). Supports only ASCII string.

Installation

Using npm:

npm install array-buffer-serializer

With yarn:

yarn add array-buffer-serializer

Usage

1. Import Serializer object

   // as CommonJS
   const Serializer = require("array-buffer-serializer");
   // or ES6
   import Serializer from "array-buffer-serializer";

2. Encode some data (object or array) using "toBuffer" method

   // as map
   const data = {this: "way"};
   // or array
   const data = ["or", "that", "way"];
   
   const buffer = Serializer.toBuffer(data);

3. Send the buffer (for example, over WebScoket)

   ws.send(buffer);

4. Receive the buffer and decode it using "fromBuffer" method

   ws.addEventListener("message", buffer => {
       const data = Serializer.fromBuffer(buffer);
   });

Compression

Type	Data		Bytes
	Object (decoded)	Raw (encoded)	Decoded	Encoded
undefined	[undefined]	<00 d4>	11	2
boolean	[true]	<00 d2>	6	2
	[false]	<00 d0>	7	2
null	[null]	<00 d6>	6	2
string	["text"]	<00 dc 74 65 78 74 dc>	8	7
int8_t	[255]	<00 c0 ff>	5	3
int16_t	[-65535]	<00 c6 ff ff>	8	4
int32_t	[4294967295]	<00 c8 ff ff ff ff>	12	6
int53_t	[9007199254740991]	<00 cc ff ff ff ff ff ff 1f>	18	9
bigint	[-18446744073709551615n]	<00 e2 ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff>	24	10
float	[1.234567]	<00 d8 3f 9e 06 4b>	10	6
double	[1.23456789012]	<00 da 3f f3 c0 ca 42 8c 1d 2b>	15	10

License

MIT