Akka.Serialization.MessagePack

Akka.NET serialization with MessagePack

The Akka.Serialization.MessagePack plugin is designed to:

• Be Low Ceremony for common cases.
• Allow flexiblity for advanced cases.
• Provide High Performance
• Allow for Optional LZ4 compaction.

Payload Versioning Notes

Assembly Versions

This plugin has a few different options to control payload serialization/deserialization:

• allow-assembly-version-mismatch
  • If False, Assembly version mismatches between payload and availiable deserializer will throw.
  • Default is True
• omit-assembly-version
  • Controls whether Assembly version is included in payload.

Schema Evolution

One can do a form of 'Schema evolution' (if you squint at it from the right angle) with MessagePack payload definitions.

Consider the following:

[MessagePackObject(false)]
public class WireType
{
   [Key(0)]
   public int Foo {get;set;}
   [Key(1)]
   public string Bar {get;set;}
   [Key(2)]
   public byte[] Bin {get;set;}
}

The above uses Messagepack attributes to define that every item is packed into an array.

If one wanted to add a new field, they could do, for example,

[MessagePackObject(false)]
public class WireType
{
   [Key(0)]
   public int Foo {get;set;}
   [Key(1)]
   public string Bar {get;set;}
   [Key(2)]
   public byte[] Bin {get;set;}
   [Key(3)]
   public byte[]? OtherBin {get;set;}
}

The consumer will, of course, need to do it's own checks for whether OtherBin is null, however the serializer itself will be able to handle using/ignoring data appropriately.

Two additional notes:

1. Any empty slots will be filled with nil up to the max Key in the array. So, in the above example, if OtherBin had a Key index of 64, it would be serialized as a 64 slot array with 60 nil values between Bin and OtherBin.
2. One can apply inheritance and DU-style behavior via attributes, see the MP docs for details.

How to setup MessagePack as default serializer

Bind MessagePack serializer using following HOCON configuration in your actor system settings:

akka {
  actor {
    serializers {
      messagepack = "Akka.Serialization.MessagePack.MsgPackSerializer, Akka.Serialization.MessagePack"
    }
    serialization-bindings {
      "System.Object" = messagepack
    }
  }
}

Benchmarks

BenchmarkDotNet=v0.10.9, OS=Windows 10 Redstone 2 (10.0.15063)
Processor=Intel Core i5-6400 CPU 2.70GHz (Skylake), ProcessorCount=4
Frequency=2648439 Hz, Resolution=377.5809 ns, Timer=TSC
.NET Core SDK=2.0.0
  [Host]      : .NET Core 2.0.0 (Framework 4.6.00001.0), 64bit RyuJIT
  NETCORE 2.0 : .NET Core 2.0.0 (Framework 4.6.00001.0), 64bit RyuJIT

Job=NETCORE 2.0  Platform=X64  Runtime=Core  
Server=True  Toolchain=CoreCsProj  

Method	Mean	Error	StdDev	Gen 0	Allocated
MsgPack_serialize_string	248.7 ns	2.221 ns	2.078 ns	0.0029	112 B
Hyperion_serialize_string	414.2 ns	5.646 ns	5.281 ns	0.0257	832 B
JsonNet_serialize_string	1,854.9 ns	36.749 ns	43.748 ns	0.1355	4336 B
MsgPack_serialize_SimpleObject	351.6 ns	5.425 ns	5.074 ns	0.0037	136 B
Hyperion_serialize_SimpleObject	965.3 ns	12.820 ns	11.992 ns	0.0331	1112 B
JsonNet_serialize_SimpleObject	23,832.4 ns	339.575 ns	317.639 ns	0.4008	14576 B
MsgPack_serialize_SimpleOptimizedObject_int_keys	200.1 ns	1.425 ns	1.333 ns	0.0019	72 B
Hyperion_serialize_SimpleOptimizedObject_preregistered	493.4 ns	6.110 ns	5.715 ns	0.0216	712 B
MsgPack_serialize_TypelessObject	2,096.3 ns	21.150 ns	19.784 ns	0.0120	568 B
Hyperion_serialize_TypelessObject	5,698.9 ns	34.648 ns	32.410 ns	0.1465	4952 B
JsonNet_serialize_TypelessObject	42,583.6 ns	291.306 ns	258.235 ns	0.3342	13960 B

Maintainer

• alexvaluyskiy