What are FlatBuffers used for?
What are FlatBuffers used for?
FlatBuffers is a cross platform serialization library architected for maximum memory efficiency. It allows you to directly access serialized data without parsing/unpacking it first, while still having great forwards/backwards compatibility.
How do FlatBuffers work?
FlatBuffers is a statically typed system, meaning the user of a buffer needs to know what kind of buffer it is. FlatBuffers can of course be wrapped inside other containers where needed, or you can use its union feature to dynamically identify multiple possible sub-objects stored.
Who uses Flatbuffer?
Facebook
Who uses FlatBuffers? Cocos2d-x, the #1 open source mobile game engine, uses it to serialize all their game data. Facebook uses it for client-server communication in their Android app.
What are FlatBuffers c++?
Flatbuffers scalar fields that have the default value are not actually stored in the serialized data but are generated in code (see Writing a schema). Scalar fields with NaN defaults break this behavior.
Should I use FlatBuffers?
Flatbuffers should only be used for cases where the object is large and you normally need to extract only one or two entities out of it. This is because the code for making a flatbuffer object is much more than that needed for protobuf and JSON.
How do you install FlatBuffers?
4 Answers
- choice “folder for installation”
- cd “folder for installation”
- cd flatbuffers.
- cmake -G “Unix Makefiles” (install cmake if need)
- make.
- sudo ln -s /full-path-to-flatbuffer/flatbuffers/flatc /usr/local/bin/flatc.
- chmod +x /full-path-to-flatbuffer/flatbuffers/flatc.
- run in any place as “flatc”
What is Flatcc?
Notice the name flatcc (FlatBuffers C Compiler) vs Googles flatc . The JSON format is compatible with Googles flatc tool. The flatc tool converts JSON from the command line using a schema and a buffer as input. flatcc generates schema specific code to read and write JSON at runtime.
What is serialization in Web technology?
Serialization is the process of converting an object into a stream of bytes to store the object or transmit it to memory, a database, or a file. Its main purpose is to save the state of an object in order to be able to recreate it when needed. The reverse process is called deserialization.
How do I start working with FlatBuffers?
To start working with FlatBuffers, you first need to create a schema file, which defines the format for each data structure you wish to serialize. Here is the schema that defines the template for our monsters: // Example IDL file for our monster’s schema.
How to use flatbuffer as a file format?
You can specify in a schema, similar to root_type, that you intend for this type of FlatBuffer to be used as a file format: Identifiers must always be exactly 4 characters long. These 4 characters will end up as bytes at offsets 4-7 (inclusive) in the buffer.
Where can I find the C++ code for the FlatBuffers header?
As noted, this header relies on flatbuffers/flatbuffers.h, which should be in your include path. The code for the FlatBuffers C++ library can be found at flatbuffers/include/flatbuffers. You can browse the library code on the FlatBuffers GitHub page.
What is the purpose of a flatbuffer at runtime?
The compiler, flatc, can write out any schemas it has just parsed as a binary FlatBuffer, corresponding to this meta-schema. Loading in one of these binary schemas at runtime allows you traverse any FlatBuffer data that corresponds to it without knowing the exact format.
