Godot 4 MessagePack implementation

MessagePack is a binary serialization format. Similar to JSON but lighter and faster. You can read the specification here.

messagepack.gd contains an implementation of the spec written in pure GDScript for Godot 4.

Installation

Copy the messagepack.gd file into your project to start using it with the Messagepack class.

Usage

The Messagepack class contains two main static methods for serialization: encode and decode:

encode(variant: Variant) -> Dictionary

Converts a Godot Variant into MessagePack binary format.

Returns:

A dictionary with:

• status (bool): true if successful, false on error
• value (PackedByteArray): Encoded binary data

decode(data: PackedByteArray) -> Dictionary

Converts MessagePack binary data back into Godot Variants.

Returns:

A dictionary with:

• status (bool): true if successful, false on error
• value (Variant): Decoded data

Example

Both methods are static so you can simply call them with Messagepack.encode() and Messagepack.decode().

# Encoding
var to_encode = {
    "hp": 200,
    "speed": 8.5,
    "is_invincible": false,
    "actions": ["jump","dash","attack"]
}
var encoded = Messagepack.encode(to_encode)
if encoded.status != null: # Check for status to verify encoding issues
    printerr(encoded.status)
else:
    print(encoded.value)

# Decoding
var to_decode = encoded.value
var decoded = Messagepack.decode(to_decode)
if decoded.status != null: # Check for status to verify decoding issues
    printerr(decoded.status)
else:
    print(decoded.value)

Acknowledgements & Attribution

This implementation is based on the work by xtpor.

The project is distributed under the MIT license.