- Flat Buffers - Home
- Flat Buffers - Introduction
- Flat Buffers - Environment Setup
- Flat Buffers - Schema
- Flat Buffers - Constructs
- Flat Buffers - table
- Flat Buffers - string
- Flat Buffers - Numbers
- Flat Buffers - Boolean
- Flat Buffers - Enum
- Flat Buffers - Vector
- Flat Buffers - Struct
- Flat Buffers - Union
- Flat Buffers - Nested Table
- Flat Buffers - Default Values
- Flat Buffers - JSON to Binary
- Flat Buffers - Binary to JSON
- Flat Buffers - Mutatable Buffers
- Flat Buffers - Backward Compatability
- Flat Buffers - Language Independence
- Flat Buffers Useful Resources
- Flat Buffers - Quick Guide
- Flat Buffers - Useful Resources
- Flat Buffers - Discussion
Flat Buffers Tutorial
Flat Buffers is an open source, cross-platform serialization library from Google. It provides efficient and language-independent ways to serialize the data. It supports serialization and deserialization from languages like Java, Python, Go, Dart, etc. It was initially developed by Google for game development and performance-intensive applications.
This Flat Buffers tutorial is based on the latest Flat Buffers 25.2.10 version.
What is Flat Buffers?
The major use-case for Google Flat Buffers is the serialization and deserialization of data which is simple and fast. Serialization and Deserialization a very important piece in gaming/microservices/distributed environment where lot of data is transferred across services and it has to be done in very efficient way. That is why, it becomes a very useful library in developing applications which require high scalability and performance.
Characteristics of Flat Buffers
Following are important characteristics of Flat Buffers −
Language independent − Flat Buffers code is platform independent. Its compiler can create code for many languages like Java, Python, Go, C, C++ etc. For example, Java object can be serialized into bytes from a Java program and can be deserialized to a Python object and vice versa.
Efficient Data Compaction − Flat Buffers was initially developed for Gaming environment and performance-critical systems. Focus of flat buffers API design is on keeping data compaction and performance in mind. It is very memory efficient and even faster than Google Protocol Buffers, another Google Library for serialization and deserialization.
Backward and Forward Compatability − Flat Buffers architecture is designed to be both backward and forward compatible. The schema of flat buffers supports adding changes in newer code and allows to deprecate older changes without breaking backward Compatability.
Easy to use − Flat Buffers library auto-generates serialization code, has a versioning scheme to ensure that the creator of data and the user of data can have separate versions of the serialization definition, etc.
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JSON to Schema and Vice Versa Flat buffers schema file can be converted to JSON file and similarly we can convert a JSON file using flat buffers schema.
Flat Buffers Reference
The complete function and method references −
Download Flat Buffers
You can download Protocol Buffers from GitHub release: Download Flat Buffers Zip File.
Who should learn Flat Buffers?
This tutorial deep dives into various components that make Google Flat Buffers a very useful library. It is directed towards software professionals who want to develop highly scalable and performant applications. Post this tutorial, you would have intermediate knowledge of Flat Buffers and its usage.
Prerequisites
To learn from this tutorial, you need to have a good hold over Java or Python and a basic knowledge of data structure is preferable.