flatbuffers

FlatBuffers: Memory Efficient Serialization Library

26,327 stars C++ Markdown Skills API Spec #c#c-plus-plus#c-sharp#cross-platform
AI Prompts & Specs

Repository: google/flatbuffers


Stars: 25806

README.md

!logo FlatBuffers
===========

!Build status
![BuildKite status](https://buildkite.com/bazel/flatbuffers)
![Fuzzing Status](https://bugs.chromium.org/p/oss-fuzz/issues/list?sort=-opened&can=1&q=proj:flatbuffers)
![Discord Chat](https:///discord.gg/6qgKs3R)
![Twitter Follow](https://twitter.com/wvo)
![Twitter Follow](https://twitter.com/dbaileychess)


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.

Quick Start

1. Build the compiler for flatbuffers (flatc)

Use cmake to create the build files for your platform and then perform the compilation (Linux example).

text
cmake -G "Unix Makefiles"
    make -j

2. Define your flatbuffer schema (.fbs)

Write the schema to define the data you want to serialize. See monster.fbs for an example.

3. Generate code for your language(s)

Use the flatc compiler to take your schema and generate language-specific code:

text
./flatc --cpp --rust monster.fbs

Which generates monster_generated.h and monster_generated.rs files.

4. Serialize data

Use the generated code, as well as the FlatBufferBuilder to construct your serialized buffer. (C++ example)

5. Transmit/store/save Buffer

Use your serialized buffer however you want. Send it to someone, save it for later, etc...

6. Read the data

Use the generated accessors to read the data from the serialized buffer.

It doesn't need to be the same language/schema version, FlatBuffers ensures the data is readable across languages and schema versions. See the Rust example reading the data written by C++.

Documentation

Go to our [landing page][] to browse our documentation.

Supported operating systems


- Windows
- macOS
- Linux
- Android
- And any others with a recent C++ compiler (C++ 11 and newer)

Supported programming languages

Code generation and runtime libraries for many popular languages.

1. C
1. C++ - snapcraft.io
1. C# - nuget.org
1. Dart - pub.dev
1. Go - go.dev
1. Java - Maven
1. JavaScript - NPM
1. Kotlin
1. Lobster
1. Lua
1. PHP
1. Python - PyPI
1. Rust - crates.io
1. Swift - swiftpackageindex
1. TypeScript - NPM
1. Nim

Versioning

FlatBuffers does not follow traditional SemVer versioning (see rationale) but rather uses a format of the date of the release.

Contribution

* [FlatBuffers Issues Tracker][] to submit an issue.
* [stackoverflow.com][] with [flatbuffers tag][] for any questions regarding FlatBuffers.

To contribute to this project, see [CONTRIBUTING][].

Community

* Discord Server

Security

Please see our Security Policy for reporting vulnerabilities.

Licensing


Flatbuffers is licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0. See [LICENSE][] for the full license text.

<br>

[CONTRIBUTING]: http://github.com/google/flatbuffers/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md
[flatbuffers tag]: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/flatbuffers
[FlatBuffers Google Group]: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/flatbuffers
[FlatBuffers Issues Tracker]: http://github.com/google/flatbuffers/issues
[stackoverflow.com]: http://stackoverflow.com/search?q=flatbuffers
[landing page]: https://google.github.io/flatbuffers
[LICENSE]: https://github.com/google/flatbuffers/blob/master/LICENSE