After months in development, the FlatBuffers 1.1 update is here. Originally released in June 2014, it’s a highly efficient open source cross-platform serialization library that allows you to read data without parsing/unpacking or allocating additional memory. It supports schema evolution (forwards/backwards compatibility) and optional JSON conversion. We primarily created it for games written in C++ where performance is critical, but it’s also useful more broadly. This update brings:
- an extensive overhaul to the Java API
- out-of-the-box support for C# and Go
- an optional verifier to make FlatBuffers practical in untrusted scenarios
- .proto parsing for easier migration from Protocol Buffers
- optional manual assignment of field IDs
- dictionary functionality through binary search on a key field
- bug fixes and other improvements thanks to 200+ commits from 28 contributors -- thank you!
By Wouter van Oortmerssen, Fun Propulsion Labs at Google*
*Fun Propulsion Labs is a team within Google that's dedicated to advancing gaming on Android and other platforms.
