bser

What is bser?

The 'bser' npm package is designed to encode and decode Binary Serialized Object Representation (BSER) format. BSER is a binary format used primarily for efficient data serialization and communication, particularly in applications where performance is critical. It is commonly used in conjunction with the Watchman file watching service.

What are bser's main functionalities?

Encoding to BSER

This feature allows you to encode JavaScript objects into BSER format. The example shows how to encode a simple object containing a greeting message.

const bser = require('bser');
const data = { hello: 'world' };
const encoded = bser.dumpToBuffer(data);
console.log(encoded);

Decoding from BSER

This feature enables the decoding of BSER formatted data back into JavaScript objects. The code sample demonstrates decoding a BSER encoded buffer to retrieve the original object.

const bser = require('bser');
const encoded = Buffer.from([0, 1, 3, 11, 1, 5, 104, 101, 108, 108, 111, 2, 5, 119, 111, 114, 108, 100]);
const decoded = bser.loadFromBuffer(encoded);
console.log(decoded);

Other packages similar to bser

protobufjs

Protobufjs is a package that provides tools to encode and decode Protocol Buffers, a language-neutral, platform-neutral, extensible mechanism for serializing structured data. It is similar to bser in terms of providing efficient data serialization but uses the Protocol Buffers format, which is more widely adopted and supported across different programming languages.

msgpack5

Msgpack5 is a package for encoding and decoding MessagePack, another efficient binary serialization format. Like bser, it aims for high performance and compact binary size. However, MessagePack is more commonly used and has implementations in various programming languages, making it more versatile for cross-platform applications.

README

BSER Binary Serialization

BSER is a binary serialization scheme that can be used as an alternative to JSON. BSER uses a framed encoding that makes it simpler to use to stream a sequence of encoded values.

It is intended to be used for local-IPC only and strings are represented as binary with no specific encoding; this matches the convention employed by most operating system filename storage.

For more details about the serialization scheme see Watchman's docs.

API

var bser = require('bser');

bser.loadFromBuffer

The is the synchronous decoder; given an input string or buffer, decodes a single value and returns it. Throws an error if the input is invalid.

var obj = bser.loadFromBuffer(buf);

bser.dumpToBuffer

Synchronously encodes a value as BSER.

var encoded = bser.dumpToBuffer(['hello']);
console.log(bser.loadFromBuffer(encoded)); // ['hello']

BunserBuf

The asynchronous decoder API is implemented in the BunserBuf object. You may incrementally append data to this object and it will emit the decoded values via its value event.

var bunser = new bser.BunserBuf();

bunser.on('value', function(obj) {
  console.log(obj);
});

Then in your socket data event:

bunser.append(buf);

Example

Read BSER from socket:

var bunser = new bser.BunserBuf();

bunser.on('value', function(obj) {
  console.log('data from socket', obj);
});

var socket = net.connect('/socket');

socket.on('data', function(buf) {
  bunser.append(buf);
});

Write BSER to socket:

socket.write(bser.dumpToBuffer(obj));