Salar.Bois is the most compact, extermly fast binary serializer for .Net Standard, .NET Code and .NET Framework.

• No compression is done, the high compact ratio is the result of Bois format.
• No configuration.
• No change to your classes.
• Compression is provided as a seperate package.

Why Salar.Bois?

• Because payload size matters. Bois serializer generates the smallest payload size.
• Because speed matters. Both serialization and deserialization are extremely fast.
• Easy to use, Serialize<T> and Deserialize<T> are all you need.
• No configuration required. No separate schema required.

NuGet Package

PM> Install-Package Salar.Bois

LZ4 Compression wrapper package

PM> Install-Package Salar.Bois.LZ4

Minimum frameworks supported are .Net Core 2.0, .Net Standard 2.1 and .Net Framework 4.5

Getting Started:

It is easy to use , just add the package to your project and voila, you can now use it.

All you need to do is to call Serialize method.

BoisSerializer.Initialize<Person>();
var boisSerializer = new BoisSerializer();

using (var mem = new MemoryStream())
{
	boisSerializer.Serialize(personInstance, mem);

	return mem.ToArray();
}

Note: Calling BoisSerializer.Initialize is not required at all, but if the performance of application is important to you, it is better to do it at the begining of your application.

Here is the complete example:

public class Project
{
	public int ID { get; set; }
	public string Name { get; set; }
	public string Description { get; set; }
	public string ProjectUrl { get; set; }
	public Version Version { get; set; }
}

class Program
{
	static void Main()
	{
		// Initialize is optional, but recommended for better performance
		BoisSerializer.Initialize<Project>();

		var projectInstance = new Project()
		{
			ID = 1,
			Name = "Salar.Bois",
			ProjectUrl = "https://github.com/salarcode/Bois",
			Version = new Version(3, 0, 0, 0),
			Description = "Salar.Bois is a compact, fast and powerful binary serializer for .NET Framework."
		};

		var boisSerializer = new BoisSerializer();

		using (var file = new FileStream("output.data", FileMode.Create))
		{
			boisSerializer.Serialize(projectInstance, file);
		}

		// All done.

		// ...
		// if you want to have more compression using LZ4 wrapper

		var boisLz4Serializer = new BoisLz4Serializer();

		using (var file = new FileStream("output-compressed.data", FileMode.Create))
		{
			boisLz4Serializer.Pickle(projectInstance, file);
		}

	}
}

How to deserialize an object:

var boisSerializer = new BoisSerializer();
return boisSerializer.Deserialize<Project>(dataStream);

// and the compressed data
var boisLz4Serializer = new BoisLz4Serializer();
return boisLz4Serializer.Unpickle<Project>(dataStream);

Defining objects

Nothing special is really required. Just these small easy rules.

• Having parameter-less public constructor.
• Collections/Lists should be generic and implement one of ICollection<>, IList<> or IDictionary<>

Compression

The BoisLz4Serializer class is in a separate package called Salar.Bois.LZ4. It is provided for anyone looking for more compact serialization. To use it just create a new instance of BoisLz4Serializer and to serialize and compress the objects call Pickle and to deserialize and uncompress call Unpickle. Please note that BoisLz4Serializer -for now- is implemented as a wrapper around LZ4.

Bois Format

If you are interested to know how Salar.Bois has gain this amazing compact format check out its Bois format wiki page.

Bois Format Schema.

Benchmarks

The benchmarks sourcecode is available. Every elapsed time is calculated for 5000 iteration (v3.0).

Please note that in these tests no configuration required for Bois versus attributes required for Avro, Zero, MsPack and ProtoZBuff. Also Zero required the properties to be virtual.

-Serialization against: ArrayTypes with small data

Serializer	Payload Size (bytes)	Serialization	Deserialization	Format	Note
Salar.Bois	58	6 ms	5 ms	Binary
Salar.Bois.LZ4	59	25 ms	6 ms	Binary
Microsoft.Avro	87	9 ms	10 ms	Binary
MessagePack	127	4 ms	4 ms	Binary
MessagePackLZ4	125	18 ms	5 ms	Binary
protobuf-net	92	7 ms	12 ms	Binary
BinaryFormatter	458	59 ms	48 ms	Binary
ZeroFormatter	153	3 ms	1 ms	Binary

-Serialization against: ArrayTypes with big data

Serializer	Payload Size (bytes)	Serialization	Deserialization	Format	Note
Salar.Bois	1400	70 ms	73 ms	Binary
Salar.Bois.LZ4	1342	117 ms	75 ms	Binary
Microsoft.Avro	1709	89 ms	119 ms	Binary
MessagePack	1951	19 ms	28 ms	Binary
MessagePackLZ4	1593	57 ms	41 ms	Binary
protobuf-net	2161	58 ms	79 ms	Binary
BinaryFormatter	2641	52 ms	50 ms	Binary
ZeroFormatter	2336	11 ms	1 ms	Binary

-Serialization against: PrimitiveTypes with small data

Serializer	Payload Size (bytes)	Serialization	Deserialization	Format	Note
Salar.Bois	74	3 ms	4 ms	Binary
Salar.Bois.LZ4	75	19 ms	5 ms	Binary
Microsoft.Avro	77	4 ms	3 ms	Binary
MessagePack	161	7 ms	3 ms	Binary
MessagePackLZ4	173	22 ms	3 ms	Binary
protobuf-net	91	6 ms	7 ms	Binary
BinaryFormatter	671	72 ms	79 ms	Binary
ZeroFormatter	134	7 ms	0 ms	Binary

-Serialization against: ComplexCollections with small data

Serializer	Payload Size (bytes)	Serialization	Deserialization	Format	Note
Salar.Bois	82	14 ms	23 ms	Binary
Salar.Bois.LZ4	81	30 ms	24 ms	Binary
Microsoft.Avro	-	-	-	Binary	Error
MessagePack	171	27 ms	19 ms	Binary
MessagePackLZ4	153	42 ms	21 ms	Binary
protobuf-net	150	17 ms	34 ms	Binary
BinaryFormatter	10852	636 ms	612 ms	Binary
ZeroFormatter	-	-	-	Binary	Not supported

-Serialization against: ComplexCollections with big data

Serializer	Payload Size (bytes)	Serialization	Deserialization	Format	Note
Salar.Bois	10414	356 ms	411 ms	Binary
Salar.Bois.LZ4	7628	837 ms	483 ms	Binary
Microsoft.Avro	-	-	-	Binary	Error
MessagePack	11013	796 ms	301 ms	Binary
MessagePackLZ4	7636	28 ms	390 ms	Binary
protobuf-net	14865	7 ms	265 ms	Binary
BinaryFormatter	34751	961 ms	488 ms	Binary
ZeroFormatter	-	-	-	Binary	Not supported

-Serialization against: ComplexContainer Collections

Serializer	Payload Size (bytes)	Serialization	Deserialization	Format	Note
Salar.Bois	120	9 ms	11 ms	Binary
Salar.Bois.LZ4	114	27 ms	12 ms	Binary
Microsoft.Avro	-	-	-	Binary	Not supported
MessagePack	-	-	-	Binary	Not supported
protobuf-net	171	14 ms	24 ms	Binary
BinaryFormatter	7396	379 ms	475 ms	Binary
ZeroFormatter	-	-	-	Binary	Not supported

-Serialization against: SpecializedCollections

Serializer	Payload Size (bytes)	Serialization	Deserialization	Format	Note
Salar.Bois	28	9 ms	17 ms	Binary
Salar.Bois.LZ4	29	22 ms	17 ms	Binary
Microsoft.Avro	-	-	-	Binary	Invalid Result
MessagePack	-	-	-	Binary	Not supported
MessagePackLZ4	-	-	-	Binary	Not supported
protobuf-net	-	-	-	Binary	Not supported
BinaryFormatter	2515	763 ms	285 ms	Binary
ZeroFormatter	-	-	-	Binary	Not supported