Re: Lua 5.1-5.3 serialization library

[Andrew Starks <andrew.starks@...>]

On Wednesday, January 14, 2015, Timm S. Mueller <tmueller@schulze-mueller.de> wrote:
> On Wed, 14 Jan 2015 13:36:00 -0200
> Hisham <h@hisham.hm> wrote:
>
> > On 14 January 2015 at 12:34, Timm S. Mueller
> > <tmueller@schulze-mueller.de> wrote:
> > > On Wed, 14 Jan 2015 15:08:31 +0100
> > > Philipp Janda <siffiejoe@gmx.net> wrote:
> > >
> > >> Am 14.01.2015 um 13:51 schröbte Timm S. Mueller:
> > >> > Hi,
> > >>
> > >> Hi!
> > >>
> > >> >
> > >> > before I'm starting to write my own, I'm looking for a serialization
> > >> > and deserialization library. Requirements:
> > >> >
> > >> > - must cover Lua 5.1, 5.2, 5.3 and LuaJIT
> > >> > - in the MIT/BSD/CC/PD license department
> > >> > - must cover cyclic references and binary data
> > >> > - preferrably written in C for performance, Lua would be fine also
> > >> > - should only use official Lua APIs, no outside dependencies, no state
> > >> > internals
> > >> > - The transport format should be legal Lua, but this isn't strictly a
> > >> > requirement and may be sacrificed if the result can be transported,
> > >> > preferrably also between different architectures and Lua versions. I'm
> > >> > not objecting to using JSON format either.
> > >> >
> > >> > Not required: Userdata, metatables, functions and upvalues. A small
> > >> > footprint and the ability to operate on a writer/readers would be nice.
> > >> > Any ideas, recommendations?
> > >> >
> > >>
> > >> Have you ruled out those[1]?
> > >
> > > Not all, I'm still working through that list, but I found not a single
> > > mention of 5.2, and 5.3 was only recently released. Many entries depend
> > > on old versions, do write to a file, miss handling for cyclic
> > > references. Eris and Pluto are ruled out for version specificy and
> > > looking into state internals. Data Dumper and Serpent are close to my
> > > requirements, but there may be others which I am not aware of or
> > > achieve the same in C or use JSON as a transport format, for example.
> >
> > Make sure to let us know the results of your research, and once you
> > pick your favorite, mark it as "endorsed" at:
> >
> > https://lua-toolbox.com/
> >
> > In the "serialization" tag, Serpent is currently the most endorsed:
> >
> > https://lua-toolbox.com/label/9
>
> Ok, will do.
>
> I'm through with the list [1].
>
> My current favourites are MessagePack [2] and cmsgpack [3], because
> this has the prospect of offering both a pure Lua and a C library, it's
> for 5.1 to 5.3, and has excellent support in a wide variety of
> languages. Need to get into testing and see if msgpack doesn't impose
> unacceptable limits for me to sacrifice the readability of Lua.
>
> [1] http://lua-users.org/wiki/TableSerialization
> [2] https://github.com/fperrad/lua-MessagePack/
> [3] https://github.com/antirez/lua-cmsgpack
>
> - Timm
>
> --
> Timm S. Mueller <tmueller@schulze-mueller.de>
> Schulze & Mueller GbR, Jungstr. 2, 10247 Berlin,
> Gesellschafter: Franciska Schulze, Timm S. Mueller,
> Tel. +49 30 85610000, http://www.schulze-mueller.de/

Timm,

This is what we decided as well. However, JSON does not handle mixed type hashes (number and string keys). Also, I'm not sure that negative indexes are supported either.

We were willing to limit what we sent over these messages, but it was something that we had to deal with. 

-Andrew