An Introduction to Vox

Vox is an open-source binary serializer released under the BSD license specifically built for the .NET ecosystem.

Some Highlights

You can manually serialize your POCOs:

public class RemoteException : Exception, ISerializableType {
   private static readonly FieldInfo kMessageField = typeof(RemoteException).GetField("_message", BindingFlags.NonPublic | BindingFlags.Instance);

   public RemoteException() { }
   private RemoteException(string message) : base(message) { }
   ...
   public void Serialize(IBodyWriter writer) => writer.Write(Message);
   public void Deserialize(IBodyReader reader) => kMessageField.SetValue(this, reader.Read<string>());
   }
}

Even outside their definitions:

public class Vector3TypeSerializer : ITypeSerializer<Vector3> {
   public void Serialize(IBodyWriter writer, Vector3 source) {
      writer.Write(source.X);
      writer.Write(source.Y);
      writer.Write(source.Z);
   }

   public void Deserialize(IBodyReader reader, Vector3 target) {
      target.X = reader.Read<float>();
      target.Y = reader.Read<float>();
      target.Z = reader.Read<float>();
   }
}

Or you can depend on runtime serializer bytecode generation!

[AutoSerializable]
public class RmiRequestDto {
   public Guid InvocationId { get; set; }
   public Guid ServiceId { get; set; }
   public string MethodName { get; set; }
   public Type[] MethodGenericArguments { get; set; }
   public object[] MethodArguments { get; set; }
}

Documentation

All serializable types must be assigned unique TypeIDs.

public class CourierVoxTypes : VoxTypes {
   public CourierVoxTypes() : base(0) {
      // Courier Core (starts at 1 - note can't use 0 as that's TNull in Vox).
      Register<MessageDto>(1);

      // Udp
      var udpBaseId = 10;
      Register<PacketDto>(udpBaseId + 0);
      Register<AcknowledgementDto>(udpBaseId + 1);
      ...
   }
}

The VoxTypes subclasses are detected and loaded at Ryu's IoC PostConstruction phase.

Future Plans

Tighter language / Dargon framework coupling

Ideally you'd be able to send around magical things like expression trees (useful for querying) and courier service references.

Versioned Serialization and Migrations

The current plan is as follows, though this is up in the air:

• Code contains uniquely IDed classes e.g. RequestDtoV1, RequestDtoV2.
• Versioned classes may implement IMigratable<>. E.g. V1 : IMigratable.
• Codebase depends on RequestDto which extends e.g. RequestDtoV2, serializer handles typing differences or Vox patches bytecode.