yesme/msgbox

Message Box

Message Box

Message Box (msgbox) is a serialization / deserialization lib.

Its major usages includes:

• serves as wire format for RPC system between different programming languages;
• boxes the data into binary buffer so they can be cached or stored.

Bearing the above usages in mind, the major design principles of msgbox are:

• compatible across languages:
  • static typing and dynamic typing
  • server side and client side
  • language limitation (e.g.: JavaScript doesn't support 64bits integer)
• byte-wise efficient
• fast
  • lazy data access
  • filtering fields
• extendable (for optional fields)

Therefore, it's:

• rich typed: list, set, map, message (struct), enum
• varification supported:
  • scope: required, optional
  • format: url (with schema), phone, email, identifier (a-z, with 0-9, with A-Z, with _, with -, with .), ip
• options supported: default value (for optional field), compressed (for string field), incremental packed (for integer list)
• header file generation supported (not necessary)