bingo — Binary serialization framework for Nim

About

This package provides the binTo, loadBin procs which deserialize the specified type from a Stream. The storeBin procs are used to write the binary representation of a location into a Stream. Low level initFromBin and storeBin procs can be overloaded, in order to support arbitary container types, i.e. marshal_smartptrs.nim.

Usage

import std/streams, bingo

type
  Foo = ref object
    value: int
    next: Foo

let d = Foo(value: 1, next: Foo(value: 2, next: nil))
let s = newStringStream()
# Make a roundtrip
s.storeBin(d) # writes binary from a location
s.setPosition(0)
let a = s.binTo(Foo) # reads binary and transform to a type
# Alternatively load directly into a location
s.setPosition(0)
var b: Foo
s.loadBin(b)

Features

• Serializing and deserializing directly into Streams. For common usage it is done automatically. Generally speaking intervation is needed when working with ptr types.
• Supports options, sets and tables by default.
• Overloading serialization procs.

Limitations

• Limited support of object variants. The discriminant field is expected first. Also there can be no fields before and after the case section.

• Borrowing proc initFromBin[T](dst: var T; s: Stream) for distinct types isn't currently working. Blocked by a Nim bug. Use overloads for now. Or you can easily override this behaviour by copying these lines in your project:

  from typetraits import distinctBase
  proc storeBin[T: distinct](s: Stream; x: T) = storeToBin(s, x.distinctBase)
  proc initFromBin[T: distinct](dst: var T; s: Stream) = initFromBin(dst.distinctBase, p)
  

• Custom pragmas are not supported. Unless hasCustomPragma improves, this feature won't be added. You can currently substitute skipped fields by creating empty overloads.