Purpose

The BinaryBuffer class provides efficient chunked storage for binary data.

References

• API reference - BinaryBuffer class documentation

• Performance guide - Buffer optimization techniques

Concepts

Buffer operations

buffer = Messagepack::BinaryBuffer.new
buffer << "data"
buffer.read(4)             # => "data"
buffer.to_s                # => ""

Where,

• BinaryBuffer.new creates a new buffer

• << appends data to the buffer

• read(n) reads and consumes n bytes

• to_s returns remaining data without consuming

Skip operations

buffer = Messagepack::BinaryBuffer.new
buffer << "\x81\xA3foo\xA5world"
buffer.skip              # Skip one object (format byte)
buffer.skip_nil          # Skip nil value if present

Where,

• skip skips a complete MessagePack object

• skip_nil efficiently skips nil values

Buffer with IO

File.open("data.msgpack", "rb") do |io|
  buffer = Messagepack::BinaryBuffer.new(io)
  unpacker = Messagepack::Unpacker.new(buffer)
  obj = unpacker.read
end

Where,

• The buffer reads from the IO when needed

• Data is automatically managed in chunks

• Suitable for large files that don’t fit in memory

Examples

Example 1. Reading large MessagePack files efficiently

# Process a large file without loading everything into memory
buffer = Messagepack::BinaryBuffer.new(File.open("large.msgpack", "rb"))
unpacker = Messagepack::Unpacker.new(buffer)

while obj = unpacker.read
  # Process each object one at a time
  process(obj)
end