It's like JSON but small and fast.

MessagePack is an efficient binary serialization format. It lets you exchange data among multiple languages like JSON. But it's faster and smaller. Small integers are encoded into a single byte, and typical short strings require only one extra byte in addition to the strings themselves.

Msgpack is Copyright (C) 2008-2010 FURUHASHI Sadayuki and licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"). For details see the COPYING file in this directory.

The source for msgpack-c is held at msgpack-c github.com site.

To report an issue, use the msgpack-c issue tracker at github.com.

You will need gcc (4.1.0 or higher), autotools.

$ git clone https://github.com/msgpack/msgpack-c.git
$ cd msgpack-c
$ ./bootstrap
$ ./configure
$ make
$ sudo make install

On typical UNIX-like platforms, download source package from Releases and run ./configure && make && make install. Example:

$ wget https://github.com/msgpack/msgpack-c/releases/download/cpp-0.5.8/msgpack-0.5.8.tar.gz
$ tar zxvf msgpack-0.5.8.tar.gz
$ cd msgpack-0.5.8
$ ./configure
$ make
$ sudo make install

On FreeBSD, you can use Ports Collection. Install net/msgpack package.

On Gentoo Linux, you can use emerge. Install dev-libs/msgpack package.

On Mac OS X, you can install MessagePack for C using MacPorts.

$ sudo port install msgpack

You might need to run sudo port selfupdate before installing to update the package repository.

You can also install via Homebrew.

$ sudo brew install msgpack

On Windows, download source package from here and extract it. Open msgpack_vc8.vcproj or msgpack_vc2008 file and build it using batch build. It builds libraries in lib/ folder and header files in include/ folder.

You can build using command line as follows:

> vcbuild msgpack_vc2008.vcproj
> dir lib       % DLL files are here
> dir include   % header files are here

Include msgpack.hpp (or msgpack.h for C) in your application and link with libmsgpack. Here is a typical gcc link command:

gcc -lmsgpack myapp.c -o myapp

#include <msgpack.hpp>
#include <vector>

int main(void) {
    // This is target object.
    std::vector<std::string> target;
    target.push_back("Hello,");
    target.push_back("World!");

    // Serialize it.
    msgpack::sbuffer sbuf;  // simple buffer
    msgpack::pack(&sbuf, target);

    // Deserialize the serialized data.
    msgpack::unpacked msg;    // includes memory pool and deserialized object
    msgpack::unpack(&msg, sbuf.data(), sbuf.size());
    msgpack::object obj = msg.get();

    // Print the deserialized object to stdout.
    std::cout << obj << std::endl;    // ["Hello," "World!"]

    // Convert the deserialized object to staticaly typed object.
    std::vector<std::string> result;
    obj.convert(&result);

    // If the type is mismatched, it throws msgpack::type_error.
    obj.as<int>();  // type is mismatched, msgpack::type_error is thrown
}

For more detailed examples see QuickStart for C and QuickStart for C++.