Serialization

Bytes and Streams

Every message class can deserialize bytes into an instance (with decode), and serialize an instance into bytes (with encode). Alternate decode_from and encode_to methods exist for working directly with streams.

user = Foo::User.new(:first_name => 'Bob')
bytes = user.encode # => binary representation of this message object
stream = user.encode_to(stream) # => serialize bytes to the given stream object (StringIO, pipe, etc).

user2 = Foo::User.decode(bytes)
user3 = Foo::User.decode_from(stream) # => read from the stream object (StringIO, pipe, etc).

user2 == user #=> true
user3 == user #=> true

Since it's quite common to create a new message instance and then encode it immediately, you can do that directly from the class method .encode. The following two lines of code are equivalent.

Foo::User.new(:first_name => 'Bob').encode
Foo::User.encode(:first_name => 'Bob')     # The preferred encoding technique when
                                           # no manipulation of the object is necessary

Hash and JSON

Each message instance can also return a hash or JSON representation of its key/value pairs.

Foo::User.new(:first_name => 'Bob').to_hash     # => { :first_name => 'Bob' }
Foo::User.new(:first_name => 'Bob').to_json     # => "{first_name:'Bob'}"

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