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A little, highly templated, and protobuf-compatible serialization/deserialization library written in C++20

📕Documentation

• a compiler and a standard library implementation with C++20 support
  • GCC 11 or above, or
  • Clang 12 or above, or
  • MSVC 14.29 (Visual Studio 2019 Version 16.9) or above
  • Apple Clang 17 (Xcode 16.4) or above
• CMake 3
• GoogleTest (optional, for unit tests)
• vcpkg (optional,vcpkg install protopuf to install)

• Data structures are described using type in C++ instead of DSLs like the Protocol Buffer Language (.proto)
• Fully compatible with encoding of the Protocol Buffers, capable of mutual serialization/deserialization
• Extensive compile-time operations aimed to improving run-time performance

For the following data structure described using.proto:

messageStudent {uint32id=1;stringname=3;}messageClass {stringname=8;repeatedStudentstudents=3;}

We can useprotopuf to describe it as C++ types:

usingnamespacepp;using Student = message<    uint32_field<"id",1>,    string_field<"name",3>>;using Class = message<    string_field<"name",8>,    message_field<"students",3, Student, repeated>>;

Subsequently, both serialization and deserialization become so easy to do:

// serializationStudent twice {123,"twice"}, tom{456,"tom"}, jerry{123456,"jerry"};Class myClass {"class 101", {tom, jerry}};myClass["students"_f].push_back(twice);array<byte,64> buffer{};auto result = message_coder<Class>::encode(myClass, buffer);assert(result.has_value());constauto& bufferEnd = *result;assert(begin_diff(bufferEnd, buffer) == 45);// deserializationauto result2 = message_coder<Class>::decode(buffer);assert(result2.has_value());constauto& [yourClass, bufferEnd2] = *result2;assert(yourClass["name"_f] =="class 101");assert(yourClass["students"_f][2]["name"_f] =="twice");assert(yourClass["students"_f][2]["id"_f] ==123);assert(yourClass["students"_f][1] == (Student{123456,"jerry"}));assert(yourClass == myClass);assert(begin_diff(bufferEnd2, bufferEnd) == 0);

More examples can be found in our test cases (test/message.cpp).

• There isa known bug in Visual Studio 2019 Version 16.8 related to template parameter lists of lambda expressions, which can produce a wrong compilation error while compiling protopuf
• Although class type in NTTP (P0732R2) is implemented in GCC 10, there is a CTAD bug (PR96331, exists until GCC 10.2) to reject valid NTTP usage, which prevent protopuf to compile successfully

• to @dngrudin for the contribution of out-of-bounds checking and unsafe/safe mode
• toJetBrains for itsOpen Source License of All Products Pack