MessagePack Serializers

The MsgPackSerializer class is used to serialize POJOs into MessagePack.

When to use it

Use MsgPackSerializer when you want JSON's data model in a compact binary form: smaller than JSON on the wire and faster to parse, at the cost of not being human readable. It writes byte[], so use it for binary protocols, message queues and caches rather than for browsers.

Example

import org.apache.juneau.marshall.msgpack.*;

public class MsgPackSerializerExample {

    public static class Person {
        public String name = "John Smith";
        public int age = 45;
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        Person person = new Person();

        // Binary output.
        byte[] bytes = (byte[]) MsgPackSerializer.DEFAULT.write(person);

        // The same bytes as spaced hex, for reading.
        System.out.println(bytes.length + " bytes");
        System.out.println(MsgPackSerializer.DEFAULT_SPACED_HEX.writeToString(person));
    }
}

The bean is 22 bytes; the same data as JSON is 30 characters.

Options

The following pre-configured serializers are provided for convenience:

Instance	Output
`MsgPackSerializer.DEFAULT`	Binary `byte[]`.
`MsgPackSerializer.DEFAULT_SPACED_HEX`	The same bytes as a hex string.
`MsgPackSerializer.DEFAULT_BASE64`	The same bytes as a Base64 string.

For anything else, start from the builder's create() method. The settings readers reach for first:

Builder method	Effect
`addBeanTypesMsgPack()`	Add `_type` properties to beans whose runtime type differs from the declared one.
`keepNullProperties()`	Write bean properties whose value is null.
`trimEmptyCollections()` / `trimEmptyMaps()`	Skip empty collections or maps.
`sortCollections()` / `sortMaps()`	Sort collections or map entries before writing.
`beanDictionary(Class...)`	Classes whose `_type` names the serializer may write.
`swaps(Class...)`	Object swaps that convert values before writing.