Binn is a computer data serialization format used mainly for application data transfer. It stores primitive data types and data structures in a binary form. For the full spec see https://github.com/liteserver/binn

The Binn format is designed to be compact and fast on readings. The elements are stored with their sizes to increase the read performance. The strings are null terminated so when read the library returns a pointer to them inside the buffer, avoiding memory allocation and data copying, an operation known as zero-copy.

If available in Hex, the package can be installed by adding binn to your list of dependencies in mix.exs:

def deps do
  [
    {:binn, "~> 0.1.0"}
  ]
end

Documentation can be generated with ExDoc and published on HexDocs. Once published, the docs can be found at https://hexdocs.pm/binn.

iex(1)> %{hello: "world", number: 123} |> Binn.encode
<<226, 22, 2, 2, 105, 100, 32, 12, 5, 104, 101, 108, 108, 111, 160, 5, 119, 111, 114, 108, 100, 0>>

iex(3)> data |> Binn.decode
%{hello: "world", number: 123}

The undefined value is enconded using the byte 0x03.

It is an extended type derived from the storage type NOBYTES.