MessagePack for SystemVerilog

MsgPack_SV is a UVM compatible SystemVerilog implementation of an encoder and decoder for the MessagePack serialization format.

MsgPack_SV provides a buffered reader and writer and a parser, that decodes/encodes message into a set of dynamically typed nodes.

Why Not JSON?

MessagePack and JSON have quite simillar structure, hovewer MessagePack has several improvements:

Better support of compound data types. Decoder doesn't need to parse huge part of message to find a size.
No need to use escape symbols in strings.
Support of binary data type.
Extensions can be used to add new data types.
Efficient number types.

One of the most important drawback of MessagePack is the unreadable format, hovewer, it MessagePack can be easily converted to JSON and vice versa.

Examples

Node API

msgpack_tree tree = new();
msgpack_map_node map = new();
msgpack_array_node array = new();

// Add data to map node
map.set_key_value(msgpack_string_node::create_node("New entry"), 
                  msgpack_int_node::create_node(15));
map.set_key_value(msgpack_string_node::create_node("New-new entry"), 
                  msgpack_string_node::create_node("Here we go again"));

// Push some data to array
array.push(msgpack_bool_node::create_node(1'b1));
array.push(msgpack_string_node::create_node("Item"));
array.push(msgpack_int_node::create_node(-15));
map.set_key_value(msgpack_int_node::create_node(100500), array);

// Build message
tree.root = map;
tree.build_msg();

Representation of the resulted message in JSON:

{
  "New entry": 15,
  "New-new entry": "Here we go again",
  "100500": [
    true,
    "Item",
    -15
  ]
}

Direct Encode/Decode API

msgpack_enc encoder = new();
msgpack_dec decoder = new();

encoder.write_map(1);       // we can directly set size of map. 
                            // In this case we don't need to
                            // call _end() function

// Add array as a map key
encoder.write_array(6);
encoder.write_bool(1'b1);
encoder.write_bool(1'b0);
encoder.write_int(-100);
encoder.write_int(52);
encoder.write_real(-1.14);
encoder.write_shortreal(-1.15);

// Add map as a map value
encoder.write_map(2);
encoder.write_string("Test");
encoder.write_int(1000);
encoder.write_string("Hello");

encoder.write_array_begin();      // if we want to calculate array/map size automaticaly,
encoder.write_string({10{"a"}});  // we can use _begin() _end() functions
encoder.write_array_end();

decoder.set_buffer(encoder.get_buffer());