Ts-Buff - A buffer serialization library

Ts-Buff is a simple and small serialization library that allows you to serialize and deserialize objects in a buffer format with a schema-based api. Serialized chunks can only have fixed sizes, so you will need to define maximum sizes for dynamic data types like strings or decimal types.

Installation

npm install ts-buff

Usage

Define a schema with the fields you need. Then create a buffer context with the appropriate size. (The required size can be acquired using schema.size). Once you create a buffer context you can call schema.write to write the object to the buffer, and schema.read to read it back.

Note that the buffer context will move with each read/write operation, so you will need to reset it with tsbuff.rewindContext if you want to read the buffer again.

import tsbuff from 'ts-buff';

//Define a schema
const schema = tsbuff.object({
    someNumber: tsbuff.uint32(),
    someBool: tsbuff.boolean()
});

//Create a buffer context and write to it
const context = tsbuff.bufferContext(schema.size);

schema.write(context, { 
    someNumber: 1,
    someBool: true
});

console.log(context.buffer); // -> <Buffer 01 00 00 00 01>


//Reset the context offset and read it
tsbuff.rewindContext(context);

console.log(schema.read(context)); // -> { someNumber: 1, someBool: true }

Currently the serialization completely fails up on mismatched types or malformed input, so make sure to use the correct types when reading and writing.

Due to how the serialization is implemented dynamically sized types like strings or arrays must be defined with a predefined size. This means that you will need to define a maximum size for these types.

import tsbuff from 'ts-buff';

tsbuff.string(10); // A string with a maximum size of 10
tsbuff.array(tsbuff.uint32(), 10); // An array with a maximum size of 10

Numeric types

• tsbuff.int8(): 8-bit signed integer
• tsbuff.int16(): 16-bit signed integer
• tsbuff.int32(): 32-bit signed integer
• tsbuff.uint8(): 8-bit unsigned integer
• tsbuff.uint16(): 16-bit unsigned integer
• tsbuff.uint32(): 32-bit unsigned integer
• tsbuff.float32(): 32-bit floating point number
• tsbuff.float64(): 64-bit floating point number

Other types

• tsbuff.boolean(): a boolean
• tsbuff.date(): a date object
• tsbuff.string(size): a string with a fixed size
• tsbuff.array(schema, size): an array with a fixed size
• tsbuff.object(schema): an object with a fixed size

Utility functions

//Creates a buffer context with the given size.
tsbuff.bufferContext(size: number): BufferContext 

//Resets the buffer context offset to 0.
tsbuff.rewindContext(context: BufferContext): void 

Creating Custom Types

You can also create your own custom serializable types. Every type must have a size property that returns the size of the type in bytes, a write and read method that handle the serialization and deserialization of the type.

import { createSerializable } from 'ts-buff/core';

function int512(): Serializable<number> {
    return createSerializable({
        size: 512,
        write: (context, value) => context.buffer.writeIntLE(value, context.offset, 512),
        read: (context) => context.buffer.readIntLE(context.offset, 512) 
    });
}