Archivist is a tiny library to serialize and deserialize data structures.
To serialize data, you first create an instance of WriteableArchive, which is an adapter around a BinaryOutputStream to encode data structures:
var w = WriteableArchive(BinaryBuffer())You then append data to the buffer by calling one of the write methods of the adapter:
w.write(unsignedLEB128: 42)
w.write(true)
w.write("Archivist")Once your data has been written, you finally extract the buffer from the adapter using finalize:
let b = w.finalize()
print(b)To deserialize data, you first create an instance of ReadableArchive, which is an adapter around any collection of bytes to serve as a buffer.
You then parse values from that buffer using the read methods of the adapter:
var r = ReadableArchive(someBuffer)
let u = r.readUnsignedLEB128()
let b = r.read(Bool.self)
let s = r.read(String.self)Instances of any type that conforms to Archivable can be passed to WriteableArchive.write or ReadableArchive.read.
Archivable comes with two requirements:
init<T>(from: inout ReadableArchive<T>, in: inout Any) throws, which deserializes a value:write<T>(to: inout WriteableArchive<T>, in: inout Any) throws, which serializes a value.
Both of these methods accept a parameter of type Any representing the context in which deserialization (respectively serialization) operates.
For instance, you may use this context to keep track of data that has already been serialized in the archive.