MessagePack format

MessagePack is an efficient binary serialization format. It lets you exchange data among multiple languages like JSON. But it's faster and smaller. Small integers are encoded into a single byte, and typical short strings require only one extra byte in addition to the strings themselves.

Dependencies

To use the MessagePack format, just add DataTree Adapters and the Jackson MessagePack JARs to the classpath:

<!-- DATATREE API -->
<dependency>
    <groupId>com.github.berkesa</groupId>
    <artifactId>datatree-adapters</artifactId>
    <version>2.0.0</version>
</dependency>

<!-- MESSAGEPACK API -->
<dependency>
    <groupId>org.msgpack</groupId>
    <artifactId>jackson-dataformat-msgpack</artifactId>
    <version>0.9.9</version>
</dependency>

Reading and writing using MessagePack adapter

import io.datatree.Tree;

// Build a small document (an object with a nested array):
Tree document = new Tree();
document.put("name", "Alice");
document.put("age", 30);
document.putList("languages").add("Java").add("Go");

// Serialize the Tree to MessagePack (binary):
byte[] msgpack = document.toBinary("msgpack");   // 36 bytes

// A byte array is not human-readable. To picture the structure, parse it
// back and print it as JSON (the default text format):
Tree reloaded = new Tree(msgpack, "msgpack");
System.out.println(reloaded.toString(true));

The reparsed document as JSON:

{
  "name":"Alice",
  "age":30,
  "languages":[
    "Java",
    "Go"
  ]
}

Required dependencies of MessagePack adapter

API Name	Adapter Class	Dependency
Jackson MsgPack	MsgPackJackson	group: 'org.msgpack', name: 'jackson-dataformat-msgpack', version: '0.9.9' (opens new window)