How to use protobuf-net to serialize a byte array?

Question

Is it possible to serialize a byte array using protobuf-net and then send it over a socket for de-serializing client side? I'm looking for an efficient way to compress/reduce the data which is sent. Somebody told me protobuf-net would be the best way. Any idea how I would go about it?

Thanks for the help!

`byte[]` is the only data-type that can be sent directly to a stream. Why serialize at all ? — H H, Aug 05 '12 at 15:32

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 05 '12 at 15:39

1

Protobuf-net is a serializer, intended for reducing complex object structures to a basic representation that can be sent over a wire. It does not use compression. If you want compression, using something like GZipStream. Indeed, the protobuf representation of a byte[] is: the length of the data (as a varint) followed by the original byte[]. No protobuf implementation will reduce that.

So: either send the original byte[] "as is", or use something like GZipStream to try to reduce the size. Note that this is not always possible, and for some data compression tools can increase the size.

answered Aug 05 '12 at 15:39

Marc Gravell

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Ah, right sorry. I misunderstood what protobuf-net does. Is there any compression libraries that you would recommend besides GZipStream? – Joey Morani Aug 05 '12 at 16:05
@Joey DeflateStream? #ZipLib provides a handful of compression implementations. – Marc Gravell Aug 05 '12 at 16:16

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 01 '13 at 17:45

We got great improvements by using the LZMA SDK from 7Zip (http://www.7-zip.org/sdk.html) to compress/decompress the byte array representation of our protobuf'ed objects. For exemple, an array of 1114 bytes shrunk to 740. But like Marc said, your mileage may vary.

How to use protobuf-net to serialize a byte array?

2 Answers2