SlowBlink

SlowBlink is a Ruby implementation of Blink Protocol.

The Blink Protocol is serialisation specification that uses a schema to define the structure of binary messages. The wire format is optimised for size and codec efficiency which makes it a useful format for applications operating over constrained networks.

SlowBlink is a tool to support rapid development of telemetry systems. It features an integrated schema parser, a dynamic message generator, and an extensible codec generator (to generate codecs in languages other than Ruby).

Highlights

• Implements Blink Specification beta4-2013-06-14.
• Integrated schema parser
• Dynamic message class generator (no code generation step)
  • Produces anonymous classes derived from SlowBlink::Message::Group
  • Does not generate constants
  • Supports blink tag specification and compact mode serialisation
• Extensible ERB based codec generator

Todo

• More tests
• Support SlowBlink::Message::DATE
• More debug features (error messages involving anonymous classes are confusing)
• Annotations are parsed but ignored

Installation

gem install slow_blink

Requires Ruby 2.0 and support for building native extensions.

Examples

see examples.

Documentation

• SlowBlink interface documentation can be viewed online
• Blink Specification is maintained here
• The version of Blink Specification implemented by SlowBlink is included in this repository under specification/blink

Typical Performance

schema with data:

    InsertOrder/1 ->
        string Symbol,  # set to "IBM"
        string OrderId, # set to "ABC123"
        u32 Price,      # set to 125
        u32 Quantity    # set to 1000

compact form:

    \x0F\x01\x03\x49\x42\x4D\x06\x41\x42\x43\x31\x32\x33\x7D\xA8\x0F  (16 bytes)

benchmark:
                                                         user     system      total        real
100000 x Schema.new                                  3.630000   0.550000   4.180000 (  4.176857)
100000 x Message::Model.new                          3.870000   0.000000   3.870000 (  3.873298)
100000 x Message::Model#group.new#encode_compact     1.300000   0.000000   1.300000 (  1.295605)
100000 x Message::Model#decode_compact               1.360000   0.000000   1.360000 (  1.362102)

parse                 23941 schema/s
generate              25817 model/s
initialise and encode 77184 message/s    (1234944 Bytes/s)
decode                73415 message/s    (1174640 Bytes/s)

running ruby 2.2.1p85 (2015-02-26 revision 49769) [x86_64-linux]
on Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4500U CPU @ 1.80GHz

Run the same test by calling rake benchmark.

License

SlowBlink has an MIT license.

Thanks

Many thanks to the authors of Blink Protocol.