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msgpack.php

A pure PHP implementation of the MessagePack serialization format.

Features

• Fully compliant with the latest MessagePack specification
• Supports streaming unpacking
• Supports unsigned 64-bit integers handling
• Supports object serialization
• Fully tested
• Relatively fast

Table of contents

• Installation
• Usage
  • Packing
    • Packing options
  • Unpacking
    • Unpacking options
• Custom types
  • Type objects
  • Type transformers
  • Extensions
    • Timestamp
    • Application-specific extensions
• Exceptions
• Tests
  • Fuzzing
  • Performance
• License

Installation

The recommended way to install the library is through Composer:

Usage

Packing

To pack values you can either use an instance of a Packer:

or call a static method on the MessagePack class:

In the examples above, the method pack automatically packs a value depending on its type. However, not all PHP types can be uniquely translated to MessagePack types. For example, the MessagePack format defines map and array types, which are represented by a single array type in PHP. By default, the packer will pack a PHP array as a MessagePack array if it has sequential numeric keys, starting from 0 and as a MessagePack map otherwise:

However, sometimes you need to pack a sequential array as a MessagePack map. To do this, use the packMap method:

Here is a list of type-specific packing methods:

Check the "Custom types" section below on how to pack custom types.

Packing options

The Packer object supports a number of bitmask-based options for fine-tuning the packing process (defaults are in bold):

The type detection mode (DETECT_STR_BIN/DETECT_ARR_MAP) adds some overhead which can be noticed when you pack large (16- and 32-bit) arrays or strings. However, if you know the value type in advance (for example, you only work with UTF-8 strings or/and associative arrays), you can eliminate this overhead by forcing the packer to use the appropriate type, which will save it from running the auto-detection routine. Another option is to explicitly specify the value type. The library provides 2 auxiliary classes for this, Map and Bin. Check the "Custom types" section below for details.

Examples:

Unpacking

To unpack data you can either use an instance of a BufferUnpacker:

or call a static method on the MessagePack class:

If the packed data is received in chunks (e.g. when reading from a stream), use the tryUnpack method, which attempts to unpack data and returns an array of unpacked messages (if any) instead of throwing an InsufficientDataException:

If you want to unpack from a specific position in a buffer, use seek:

To skip bytes from the current position, use skip:

To get the number of remaining (unread) bytes in the buffer:

To check whether the buffer has unread data:

If needed, you can remove already read data from the buffer by calling:

With the read method you can read raw (packed) data:

Besides the above methods BufferUnpacker provides type-specific unpacking methods, namely:

Unpacking options

The BufferUnpacker object supports a number of bitmask-based options for fine-tuning the unpacking process (defaults are in bold):

1. The binary MessagePack format has unsigned 64-bit as its largest integer data type, but PHP does not support such integers, which means that an overflow can occur during unpacking.

2. Make sure the GMP extension is enabled.

3. Make sure the Decimal extension is enabled.

Examples:

Custom types

In addition to the basic types, the library provides functionality to serialize and deserialize arbitrary types. This can be done in several ways, depending on your use case. Let's take a look at them.

Type objects

If you need to serialize an instance of one of your classes into one of the basic MessagePack types, the best way to do this is to implement the CanBePacked interface in the class. A good example of such a class is the Map type class that comes with the library. This type is useful when you want to explicitly specify that a given PHP array should be packed as a MessagePack map without triggering an automatic type detection routine:

More type examples can be found in the src/Type directory.

Type transformers

As with type objects, type transformers are only responsible for serializing values. They should be used when you need to serialize a value that does not implement the CanBePacked interface. Examples of such values could be instances of built-in or third-party classes that you don't own, or non-objects such as resources.

A transformer class must implement the CanPack interface. To use a transformer, it must first be registered in the packer. Here is an example of how to serialize PHP streams into the MessagePack bin format type using one of the supplied transformers, StreamTransformer:

More type transformer examples can be found in the src/TypeTransformer directory.

Extensions

In contrast to the cases described above, extensions are intended to handle extension types and are responsible for both serialization and deserialization of values (types).

An extension class must implement the Extension interface. To use an extension, it must first be registered in the packer and the unpacker.

The MessagePack specification divides extension types into two groups: predefined and application-specific. Currently, there is only one predefined type in the specification, Timestamp.

Timestamp

The Timestamp extension type is a predefined type. Support for this type in the library is done through the TimestampExtension class. This class is responsible for handling Timestamp objects, which represent the number of seconds and optional adjustment in nanoseconds:

When using the MessagePack class, the Timestamp extension is already registered:

Application-specific extensions

In addition, the format can be extended with your own types. For example, to make the built-in PHP DateTime objects first-class citizens in your code, you can create a corresponding extension, as shown in the example. Please note, that custom extensions have to be registered with a unique extension ID (an integer from 0 to 127).

More extension examples can be found in the examples/MessagePack directory.

To learn more about how extension types can be useful, check out this article.

Exceptions

If an error occurs during packing/unpacking, a PackingFailedException or an UnpackingFailedException will be thrown, respectively. In addition, an InsufficientDataException can be thrown during unpacking.

An InvalidOptionException will be thrown in case an invalid option (or a combination of mutually exclusive options) is used.

Tests

Run tests as follows:

Also, if you already have Docker installed, you can run the tests in a docker container. First, create a container:

The command above will create a container named msgpack with PHP 8.2 runtime. You may change the default runtime by defining the PHP_IMAGE environment variable:

See a list of various images here.

Then run the unit tests:

Fuzzing

To ensure that the unpacking works correctly with malformed/semi-malformed data, you can use a testing technique called Fuzzing. The library ships with a help file (target) for PHP-Fuzzer and can be used as follows:

Performance

To check performance, run:

With JIT:

You may change default benchmark settings by defining the following environment variables:

For example:

Another example, benchmarking both the library and the PECL extension:

With JIT:

Note that the msgpack extension (v2.1.2) doesn't support ext, bin and UTF-8 str types.

License

The library is released under the MIT License. See the bundled LICENSE file for details.