-
That's enough theory, let's start coding! For these examples, we'll use the msgpack.php MessagePack library since it provides a convenient API to handle extension types. I hope you'll find these code examples easy to understand even if you use other libraries. Since I mentioned UUID, let's implement support for this data type as an example. To do so, we'll need to write an extension---a class to serialize and deserialize UUID values. We will use the symfony/uid library to make handling such values easier.
-
SaaSHub
SaaSHub - Software Alternatives and Reviews. SaaSHub helps you find the best software and product alternatives
-
That was an example of a simple UUID extension. Similarly, you can add support for any other type used in your application: DateTime, Decimal, Money. Or you can write a versatile extension that allows serializing any object (as it was done in KPHP). However, this is not the only use for extensions. I'll now show you some interesting examples that demonstrate other advantages of using extension types.
-
Choose the data compression algorithm based on the specifics of your data. For example, if you are working with lots of short strings, take a look at [*SMAZ](https://github.com/antirez/smaz).*
-
If you've ever inquired about MessagePack before, you probably know the phrase from its official website, msgpack.org: "It's like JSON, but fast and small." In fact, if you compare how much memory space the same data occupies in JSON and MessagePack, you'll see why the latter is a much more compact format. For example, the number 100 takes 3 bytes in JSON and only 1 in MessagePack. The difference becomes more significant as the number's order of magnitude grows. For the maximum value of int64 (9223372036854775807), the size of the stored data differs by as much as 10 bytes (19 against 9)! The same is true for boolean values---4 or 5 bytes in JSON against 1 byte in MessagePack. It is also true for arrays because many syntactic symbols---such as commas separating the elements, semicolons separating the key-value pairs, and brackets marking the array limits---don't exist in binary format. Obviously, the larger the array is, the more syntactic litter accumulates along with the payload. String values, however, are a little more complicated. If your strings don't consist entirely of quotation marks, line feeds, and other special symbols that require escaping, then you won't see a difference between their sizes in JSON and in MessagePack. For example, "foobar" has a length of 8 bytes in JSON and 7 in MessagePack. Note that the above only applies to UTF-8 strings. For binary strings, JSON's disadvantage against MessagePack is obvious.
