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MessagePack

A compact binary data interchange format

What is MessagePack

MessagePack is an efficient binary serialization format designed for fast and compact data exchange between systems.

Core properties

• Compact compared to text formats like JSON
• Fast serialization and deserialization
• Cross-language support across many ecosystems
• Flexible data model with optional extensions

Why MessagePack

MessagePack solves a very specific problem:

• JSON is easy to read but inefficient on the wire
• IoT and distributed systems care about bytes, latency, and CPU
• MessagePack keeps JSON-like simplicity but removes text overhead

In short, JSON Data model with Binary efficiency.

Key Use Cases

1. IoT telemetry and device data
2. Edge gateways aggregating high-frequency events
3. Microservice-to-microservice communication
4. Caching layers like Redis and Memcached
5. Distributed systems logging and checkpoints

MessagePack vs JSON

• Binary and compact
• Faster to parse
• Smaller payloads for most data
• Not human-readable
• Debugging requires tooling

MessagePack vs CBOR

• MessagePack is simpler and lighter
• CBOR supports semantic tags like datetime and URI
• CBOR supports deterministic encoding for hashing and signatures
• Size differences are workload-dependent, not guaranteed

Comparison with Similar Formats

Key Differences:

• vs JSON: 20-30% smaller payloads, faster parsing, but not human-readable
• vs CBOR: More compact for simple types, CBOR has better semantic tagging

Basic Operations

• packb() converts Python objects to MessagePack bytes
• unpackb() converts MessagePack bytes back to Python objects

Python Example

git clone https://github.com/gchandra10/python_messagepack_examples.git

MessagePack in IoT and Edge Systems

• Commonly used in edge gateways and ingestion pipelines
• Efficient for short, frequent telemetry messages
• Suitable for MQTT payloads where the broker is payload-agnostic
• Rarely used directly in regulated firmware layers

Important:

• MQTT does not care about payload format
• MessagePack is an application-layer choice, not a protocol requirement

Summary

When to Choose MessagePack

• Bandwidth or memory is constrained
• JSON is too verbose
• Binary data is common
• Speed matters more than readability
• Schema flexibility is acceptable

What MessagePack Does Not Do

• No schema enforcement
• No backward compatibility guarantees
• No semantic meaning for fields
• No built-in validation
• No deterministic encoding

Devices like AppleWatch, Fitbit use Protocol Buffers for strict schema FDA regulated enforcement.

#dataformat #messagepackVer 6.0.5