It's like JSON. but fast and small.

MessagePack is an efficient binary serialization format. It lets you exchange data among multiple languages like JSON but it's faster and smaller. For example, small integers (like flags or error code) are encoded into a single byte, and typical short strings only require an extra byte in addition to the strings themselves.

If you ever wished to use JSON for convenience (storing an image with metadata) but could not for technical reasons (encoding, size, speed...), MessagePack is a perfect replacement.

> require "msgpack"       # gem install msgpack
> msg = [1,2,3].to_msgpack  #=> "\x93\x01\x02\x03"
> MessagePack.unpack(msg)   #=> [1,2,3]

...and many other languages

Happy Hackers :-)

"Redis scripting has support for MessagePack because it is a fast and compact serialization format with a simple to implement specification. I liked it so much that I implemented a MessagePack C extension for Lua just to include it into Redis."

Salvatore Sanfilippo, creator of Redis.

"MessagePack has been simply invaluable to us. We use MessagePack + Memcache to cache many of our feeds on Pinterest. These feeds are compressed and very quick to unpack thanks to MessagePack while Memcache gives us fast atomic pushes."

Marty Weiner, Software Engineer.

"Fluentd uses MessagePack for all internal data representation. It's crazy fast because of zero-copy optimization of msgpack-ruby. Now MessagePack is an essential component of Fluentd to achieve high performance and flexibility at the same time."

Sadayuki Furuhashi, creator of Fluentd.

"I use MessagePack for all of the data serialization in Salt, it is fantastic! I tested quite a few serialization formats and MessagePack was dramatically faster and the data was always smaller. When I changed out pickles for MessagePack in Salt there was a speed increase of almost 3 fold across the board."

Tom Hatch, author of Salt.

Also use MessagePack? Waiting for your testimonial!

Implementation projects

Ruby

gem install msgpack
require "msgpack"
msg = [1,2,3].to_msgpack  #=> "\x93\x01\x02\x03"
MessagePack.unpack(msg)   #=> [1,2,3]

Ruby implementation provides streaming deserializer.

Python

easy_install msgpack-python
import msgpack
msg = msgpack.packb([1,2,3])    #=> "\x93\x01\x02\x03"
msgpack.unpackb(msg)            #=> [1,2,3]
help(msgpack)

Python implementation provides streaming deserializer.

Perl

cpan Data::MessagePack
use Data::MessagePack;
my $packed   = Data::MessagePack->pack($dat);
my $unpacked = Data::MessagePack->unpack($dat);

Perl implementation provides streaming deserializer.

C/C++

port install msgpack  # MacPorts
brew install msgpack  # Homebrew
apt-get install libmsgpack-dev  # Ubuntu

Or download msgpack-0.5.7.tar.gz and build it to install.

#include <msgpack.hpp>
struct myclass { std::vector vec; MSGPACK_DEFINE(vec); };
msgpack::pack(buffer, vec);
msgpack::unpack(&result, buffer.data(), buffer.size());

Java

import org.msgpack.MessagePack;

MessagePack msgpack = new MessagePack();
byte[] bytes = msgpack.write(object);
MyClass object = msgpack.read(bytes, MyClass.class);

Java implementation provides streaming deserializer, dynamically typed objects, type conversion templates, dynamic template generators and annotations.

Take a look at test cases for examples.

PHP

git clone https://github.com/msgpack/msgpack-php.git
cd msgpack-php
phpize
./configure && make && make install
$data = array(0=>1,1=>2,2=>3);
$msg = msgpack_pack($data);
$data = msgpack_unpack($msg);

Node.js

npm install msgpack
var msgpack = require('msgpack');

var o = {"a" : 1, "b" : 2, "c" : [1, 2, 3]};
var b = msgpack.pack(o);
var oo = msgpack.unpack(b);

JavaScript

var myByteArray = msgpack.pack(myObject);
myObject = msgpack.unpack(myByteArray);

Licensed under MIT license.

Objective-C

#import "MessagePack.h"
..
NSData* packed = [someArray messagePack];
NSArray* someArray = [packed messagePackParse];

C#

using MsgPack.Serialization;
var serializer = MessagePackSerializer.Create<Foo>();
serializer.Pack(foo, stream);
stream.Position = 0;
var value = serializer.Unpack(stream);

You can also use C#(CLI) implementation for any other CLI (Common Language Infrastructure) languages such as Visual Basic.
CLI implementation also provides streaming deserializer, some level of dynamic typing, and annotations. See Wiki for details.

Lua

Coming soon...

Scala

D

msgpack-d is only one file. Please add msgpack.d to your project.

import msgpack;

Tuple!(uint, string) receive, send = tuple(2012. "Hello D!");
auto serialized = pack(send);
unpack(serialized, receive);
assert(send == recieve);

D implementation also provides streaming deserializer.

Haskell

import Data.MessagePack
main = do
  let bs = pack (1 :: Int, 3.14 :: Double, "Hello, MessagePack!")
  print bs
  print (unpack bs :: (Int, Double, String))

Erlang

Write into your rebar.config:

{deps, [
  {msgpack, ".*",
    {git, "git://github.com/msgpack/msgpack-erlang.git", "HEAD"}}
]}.
Binary = msgpack:pack(Spam),
{ok, Spam} = msgpack:unpack(Binary).

OCaml

$ opam install msgpack
type t = { ans : int } with conv(msgpack)

let bytes =
  Msgpack.Serialize.serialize_string (msgpack_of_t { ans = 42 })
let { ans = n } =
  t_of_msgpack (Msgpack.Serialize.deserialize_string bytes)
This library is mathematically proven!

Smalltalk

map := Dictionary new.
map at: 'someArray' asByteArray put: #(1 2.2 #[3 4 5]).
packed := map messagePacked.
(Object fromMessagePack: packed) inspect.

Go

Coming soon...

LabVIEW

Installable through the VI Package Manager using one of the compiled versions on the downloads page

Related projects

ZeroRPC by DotCloud

zerorpc is a flexible RPC implementation based on zeromq and messagepack. Service APIs exposed with zerorpc are called "zeroservices".

pficommon by Preferred Infrastructure, Inc.

General purpose C++ library for Preferred Infrastructure, Inc. It includes MessagePack-RPC implementation for C++