Awesome
IkeaPack 
Named IkeaPack because it compacts structs in a very compact and packed manner, and if you don't know how to reassemble it, it may just look like a random blob of parts. Just like ikea products!
(If anyone from ikea doesn't like me using their name, just reach out to me and I'll change it, no copyright/trademark infringement intended.)
This is a packed struct serializer that is mostly meant for a private project but was released as it may be useful to someone else.
Originally this package was made as an extension to binary.Read and binary.Write, but I soon found those functions didn't match my use case as they offered no support for strings nor compression.
Features
- Caches types for faster calls to the same type
- Compression support
- Tread safe (the calls are, reading to the value is not)
- Easy to implement in other languages
- Supported types:
- uint8 (and byte) up to uint64
- int8 up to int64
- float32 and float64
- string
- anything implementing the Packer/Unpacker interfaces
- slices
- structs
Format
- All primitives are stored in big endian format
- All slices are stored with a uint32 prefix indicating their length
- Strings are stored with a uint32 prefix indicating their length
- Compression blocks are stored using deflate (level 9) with a uint32 prefixing the size of the compressed data blob
Note about int/uint
The types int and uint are not supported because their actual sizes depend on the compiler architecture.
Instead, be explicit and use int32/int64/uint32/uint64.
Note about nil values
This lib will initialize nil values when Unpacking/Unmarshalling, however it will panic if a nil value is attempted to be Packed/Serialized.
This is due to the fact that there is no safe way to distinguish nil pointers from zero values.
Be safe, don't try to serialize nil values.
Include in your project
import "github.com/ikkerens/ikeapack"
Usage
package main
import (
"bytes"
"log"
"github.com/ikkerens/ikeapack"
)
type myBlob struct {
A uint64 // all fields have to be exported
B []byte `ikea:"compress:9"` // this field will be packed and compressed, with flate level 5
C subBlob // If you omit the level `ikea:"compress"`, level 9 will be assumed.
D int32
}
type subBlob struct {
D string
}
func main() {
b := new(bytes.Buffer)
blob := &myBlob{A: 1, B: []byte{1, 2, 3, 4}, C: subBlob{D: "test message"}}
// Pack
if err := ikea.Pack(b, blob); err != nil { // Write does not need a pointer, but it is recommended
log.Fatalln(err)
}
// Unpack
newBlob := new(myBlob)
if err := ikea.Unpack(b, newBlob); err != nil { // Read *needs* a pointer, or it will panic
log.Fatalln(err)
}
log.Printf("Successfully unpacked: %+v", newBlob)
}
Benchmarks
These benchmarks can be found in alecthomas's go serialization benchmarks.
While not all benchmarks are included since not all dependencies could resolve, these give a good overview of the performance of this lib vs the others.
Note that this library does not have a focus on being the fastest in any way, as this was made to cover a specific use-case. But it does strive to be as fast as it can be.
These benchmarks were executed on a Dell laptop with an i7-8550U cpu and 16GB of ram.
BenchmarkIkeaMarshal-8 3000000 505 ns/op 72 B/op 8 allocs/op
BenchmarkIkeaUnmarshal-8 2000000 670 ns/op 160 B/op 11 allocs/op
BenchmarkJsonMarshal-8 500000 3785 ns/op 1224 B/op 9 allocs/op
BenchmarkJsonUnmarshal-8 300000 4412 ns/op 464 B/op 7 allocs/op
BenchmarkEasyJsonMarshal-8 1000000 1559 ns/op 784 B/op 5 allocs/op
BenchmarkEasyJsonUnmarshal-8 1000000 1363 ns/op 160 B/op 4 allocs/op
BenchmarkBsonMarshal-8 1000000 1433 ns/op 392 B/op 10 allocs/op
BenchmarkBsonUnmarshal-8 1000000 1928 ns/op 244 B/op 19 allocs/op
BenchmarkGobMarshal-8 2000000 930 ns/op 48 B/op 2 allocs/op
BenchmarkGobUnmarshal-8 2000000 943 ns/op 112 B/op 3 allocs/op
BenchmarkXdrMarshal-8 1000000 1740 ns/op 456 B/op 21 allocs/op
BenchmarkXdrUnmarshal-8 1000000 1449 ns/op 240 B/op 11 allocs/op
BenchmarkUgorjiCodecMsgpackMarshal-8 1000000 1141 ns/op 561 B/op 6 allocs/op
BenchmarkUgorjiCodecMsgpackUnmarshal-8 1000000 1349 ns/op 449 B/op 6 allocs/op
BenchmarkSerealMarshal-8 500000 2680 ns/op 912 B/op 21 allocs/op
BenchmarkSerealUnmarshal-8 500000 2943 ns/op 1008 B/op 34 allocs/op
BenchmarkBinaryMarshal-8 1000000 1427 ns/op 334 B/op 20 allocs/op
BenchmarkBinaryUnmarshal-8 1000000 1554 ns/op 336 B/op 22 allocs/op
BenchmarkHproseMarshal-8 2000000 971 ns/op 479 B/op 8 allocs/op
BenchmarkHproseUnmarshal-8 1000000 1140 ns/op 320 B/op 10 allocs/op
BenchmarkGoAvroMarshal-8 500000 2561 ns/op 1030 B/op 31 allocs/op
BenchmarkGoAvroUnmarshal-8 200000 6346 ns/op 3437 B/op 87 allocs/op
BenchmarkGoAvro2TextMarshal-8 500000 2875 ns/op 1326 B/op 20 allocs/op
BenchmarkGoAvro2TextUnmarshal-8 500000 2690 ns/op 807 B/op 34 allocs/op
BenchmarkGoAvro2BinaryMarshal-8 2000000 916 ns/op 510 B/op 11 allocs/op
BenchmarkGoAvro2BinaryUnmarshal-8 2000000 979 ns/op 576 B/op 13 allocs/op
BenchmarkProtobufMarshal-8 2000000 984 ns/op 200 B/op 7 allocs/op
BenchmarkProtobufUnmarshal-8 2000000 827 ns/op 192 B/op 10 allocs/op
Below you will find some of the benchmarks that do not rely on Go's reflection at runtime, which creates a significant performance boost, but for diligence it's worth mentioning here regardless.
BenchmarkMsgpMarshal-8 10000000 178 ns/op 128 B/op 1 allocs/op
BenchmarkMsgpUnmarshal-8 5000000 340 ns/op 112 B/op 3 allocs/op
BenchmarkFlatBuffersMarshal-8 5000000 341 ns/op 0 B/op 0 allocs/op
BenchmarkFlatBuffersUnmarshal-8 5000000 249 ns/op 112 B/op 3 allocs/op
BenchmarkCapNProtoMarshal-8 3000000 483 ns/op 56 B/op 2 allocs/op
BenchmarkCapNProtoUnmarshal-8 3000000 438 ns/op 200 B/op 6 allocs/op
BenchmarkCapNProto2Marshal-8 2000000 723 ns/op 244 B/op 3 allocs/op
BenchmarkCapNProto2Unmarshal-8 1000000 1019 ns/op 320 B/op 6 allocs/op
BenchmarkGoprotobufMarshal-8 3000000 396 ns/op 96 B/op 2 allocs/op
BenchmarkGoprotobufUnmarshal-8 2000000 614 ns/op 200 B/op 10 allocs/op
BenchmarkGogoprotobufMarshal-8 10000000 162 ns/op 64 B/op 1 allocs/op
BenchmarkGogoprotobufUnmarshal-8 10000000 223 ns/op 96 B/op 3 allocs/op
BenchmarkColferMarshal-8 10000000 133 ns/op 64 B/op 1 allocs/op
BenchmarkColferUnmarshal-8 10000000 187 ns/op 112 B/op 3 allocs/op
BenchmarkGencodeMarshal-8 10000000 179 ns/op 80 B/op 2 allocs/op
BenchmarkGencodeUnmarshal-8 10000000 202 ns/op 112 B/op 3 allocs/op
BenchmarkGencodeUnsafeMarshal-8 20000000 102 ns/op 48 B/op 1 allocs/op
BenchmarkGencodeUnsafeUnmarshal-8 10000000 146 ns/op 96 B/op 3 allocs/op
BenchmarkXDR2Marshal-8 10000000 162 ns/op 64 B/op 1 allocs/op
BenchmarkXDR2Unmarshal-8 10000000 136 ns/op 32 B/op 2 allocs/op