Introduction

SimpleBuffers is a schema language and compiler for data serialization. Like protobuf, it is used to generate code in various languages that encodes and decodes data structures in a common format. Unlike protobuf, SimpleBuffers is designed for consistent APIs in resource-constrained environments. It forgoes some backwards-compatibility in order to increase efficiency in both storage density and encoding/decoding speed. In fact, SimpleBuffers data can be decoded lazily, often in constant-time. For more information about how this is done, see Serialization Format.

SimpleBuffers has an extremely similar serialization scheme to Cap'n Proto. I made this project independently before investigating Cap'n Proto's inner workings, and while I prefer some aspects of my C++ API, I highly recommend using Cap'n Proto over SimpleBuffers for any serious project. It is more established, more complete, and will be far better supported.