framed-msg

A framing message protocol for packing multiple opaque binary arguments. Comes with both static and stream based parser API.

Installation

$ npm install framed-msg

Examples

Encode and decode a message:

const fmsg = require('framed-msg');
const bin = fmsg.encode([Buffer.from('Hello'), Buffer.from('World')]);
const msg = fmsg.decode(bin);
 
console.log(msg[0].toString(), msg[1].toString()); // Prints; Hello World

Stream decoding a message:

const fmsg = require('framed-msg');
 
const msg = new fmsg.DecodeStream();
msg.pipe(process.stdout)
 
const bin = fmsg.encode([Buffer.from('Hello'), Buffer.from('World')]);
msg.write(bin);

API

This module have the following API:

.encode(bufs)

Encodes an Array of Buffers into a framed message.

const fmsg = require('framed-msg');
const bin = fmsg.encode([Buffer.from('Hello'), Buffer.from('World')]);

.decode(message)

Decodes a framed message into an Array of Buffers.

const fmsg = require('framed-msg');
const msg = fmsg.decode(msgFromEncoder);

.streamDecode()

A transform stream for stream decoding framed messages.

const stream = require('stream');
const fmsg = require('framed-msg');
const net = require('net');
 
net.createServer((socket) => {
    const decoder = new fmsg.DecodeStream();
    socket.pipe(decoder).pipe(new stream.Writable({
        objectMode: true,
        write: (chunk, enc, next) => {
            console.log(chunk[0].toString());  // Hello
            console.log(chunk[1].toString());  // World
            next();
        }
    }));
}).listen(3000);
 
const client = net.connect(3000);
const msg = fmsg.encode([Buffer.from('Hello'), Buffer.from('Worlds')]);
client.write(msg);

.streamEncode()

A transform stream for stream encoding framed messages.

const stream = require('stream');
const fmsg = require('framed-msg');
const net = require('net');
 
net.createServer((socket) => {
    const decoder = new fmsg.DecodeStream();
    socket.pipe(decoder).pipe(new stream.Writable({
        objectMode: true,
        write: (chunk, enc, next) => {
            console.log(chunk[0].toString());  // Hello
            console.log(chunk[1].toString());  // World
            next();
        }
    }));
}).listen(3000);
 
const client = net.connect(3000);
 
const encoder = new fmsg.EncodeStream();
const src = new stream.Readable({
    objectMode: true,
    read() {
        this.push([Buffer.from('Hello'), Buffer.from('Worlds')]);
        this.push(null);
    }
});
 
src.pipe(encoder).pipe(client)

Protocol

The protocol goes as follow. The first byte of the message contains an argument count of the number of arguments to expect in the message.

Its then followed by a pair of size frames and arguments. The size frame is a 32-bit unsigned integer providing the size of the following argument. The argument can be any opaque binary so it can hold any String, stringified JSON, image etc...

The massage can hold up to 128 arguments.

+--------+----------+--------+----------+--------+
| <argc> | <length> | <data> | <length> | <data> | etc..
+--------+----------+--------+----------+--------+

Benchmarks

On node.js version 9.4.0:

> node benchmark/main.js
 
.encode() x 2,096,246 ops/sec ±0.69% (91 runs sampled)
.decode() x 5,474,602 ops/sec ±1.20% (93 runs sampled)
.decodeStream() x 1,044,913 ops/sec ±31.77% (67 runs sampled)

node.js compabillity

This module is written in ES6 and uses some functions only found in node.js 8.2 and newer. This module will not function with older than 8.2 versions of node.js.

License

The MIT License (MIT)

Copyright (c) 2018 - Trygve Lie - [e-mail]

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.