Manual packings

You can serialize/deserialize object without serializers. Instead, you will use Packer and Unpacker, which are low level API of serialization. If you run on Silverlight/WindowsPhone and you does not refer .Serialization assembly, only possible option is this method.

There are four significant types.

• Packer - Implements serialization from primitives, MessagePackObjects, or IPackables to MessagePack stream. See following description.
• Unpacker - Implements deserialization to primitives, MessagePackObjects, or IUnpackables from MessagePack stream. See following description.
• IPackable - An interface for the type which has own serialization logic.
• IUnpackable - An interface for the type which has own deserialization logic.

There are some utility classes for low level serialization support, see API documentation for details:

• Unpacking - Provides utility unpacking static methods. See following description.
• MessagePackConvert - Implements some de facto conversions between primitives and "basic" types like DateTime.

API Details

Packer

A Packer class defines writer for MessagePack stream like a XmlWriter. Note that a Packer prefers most compact type. For example, if you pass the integer value 1 as Int64 type, a packer will pack it as Positive Fix Num value.

Unpacker

A Unpacker class defines "pull-style" reader for MessagePack stream like a XmlReader. This object holds unpacked values as MessagePackObject. For arrays and maps, it unpacks their length first, then unpacks elements subsequently. There is a convinient API, ReadSubtree, which limits reading scope to the current collection. Note that an unpacker does not distinguish the actual form for a value in the stream, that is, the value 1 is able to be unpacked even if it is packed as Int16, UInt64, etc., and client cannot know the actual packed value was.

Feeding

There are no "Feeding" API in the Unpacker because the source Stream object should handle it such as NetworkStream does.

Fast Reader

Unfortunately, MessagePackObject construction involves some overhead to deserialization, so there are fast pathes to read MessagePack binary faster -- they are ReadXxx methods. See API docs for more information.

Unpacking

The Unpacking class defines static methods to directly unpack various type values from the source stream. This API is intended to usually be used in unit testing.