https://github.com/gvx/Ser

A fast, robust, richly-featured table serialisation library for Lua
https://github.com/gvx/Ser

Last synced: 2 months ago
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A fast, robust, richly-featured table serialisation library for Lua

• Host: GitHub
• URL: https://github.com/gvx/Ser
• Owner: gvx
• License: mit
• Created: 2013-11-03T16:17:28.000Z (about 11 years ago)
• Default Branch: master
• Last Pushed: 2016-05-19T23:03:02.000Z (over 8 years ago)
• Last Synced: 2024-08-02T06:19:47.621Z (6 months ago)
• Language: Lua
• Size: 15.6 KB
• Stars: 74
• Watchers: 9
• Forks: 16
• Open Issues: 0
• Metadata Files:
  • Readme: README.md
  • License: LICENSE.md

Awesome Lists containing this project

• awesome-love2d - Ser - Fast, robust, richly-featured table serialization library for Lua. (Serialization)

README

        
> Since 2016-02-16, Ser is **deprecated**. I will still fix reported bugs, but for new projects, I recommend [bitser](https://github.com/gvx/bitser) if you're using LuaJIT, and [binser](https://github.com/bakpakin/binser)

otherwise.

Ser

===

Ser is a fast, robust, richly-featured table serialization library for Lua. It

was specifically written to store configuration and save files for

[LÖVE](http://love2d.org/) games, but can be used anywhere.

Originally, this was the code to write save games for

[Space](https://github.com/gvx/space), but was released as a stand-alone

library after many much-needed improvements.

Like Space itself, you use, distribute and extend Ser under the terms of the

MIT license.

Simple

------

Ser is very simple and easy to use:

```lua

local serialize = require 'ser'

print(serialize({"Hello", world = true}))

-- prints:

-- return {"Hello", world = true}

```

Fast

----

Using Serpent's benchmark code, Ser is 33% faster than Serpent.

Robust

------

Sometimes you have strange, non-euclidean geometries in your table

constructions. It happens, I don't judge. Ser can deal with that, where some

other serialization libraries cry "Iä! Iä! Cthulhu fhtagn!" and give up —

or worse, silently produce incorrect data.

```lua

local serialize = require 'ser'

local cthulhu = {{}, {}, {}}

cthulhu.fhtagn = cthulhu

cthulhu[1][cthulhu[2]] = cthulhu[3]

cthulhu[2][cthulhu[1]] = cthulhu[2]

cthulhu[3][cthulhu[3]] = cthulhu

print(serialize(cthulhu))

-- prints:

-- local _3 = {}

-- local _2 = {}

-- local _1 = {[_2] = _3}

-- local _0 = {_1, _2, _3}

-- _0.fhtagn = _0

-- _2[_1] = _2

-- _3[_3] = _0

-- return _0

```

Tested

------

Check out `tests.lua` to see how Ser behaves with all kinds of inputs.

Other solutions

---------------

Check out the [Lua-users wiki](http://lua-users.org/wiki/TableSerialization)

for other libraries that do roughly the same thing.

See also

--------

* [Lady](https://github.com/gvx/Lady): for trusted-source savegames

* [Smallfolk](https://github.com/gvx/Smallfolk): for untrusted-source serialization