serialize.md

knife.serialize

Store data structures as strings.

Example usage

Require the module.

local Serialize = require 'knife.serialize'

Create an object to serialize.

local data = { name = 'Bob', level = 1, dead = false,
    inventory = { 'spoon', 'fork', 'knife' } }

Serialize the object.

local savegame = Serialize(data)

Now savegame holds a string containing a script that, when loaded with loadstring, or when saved to a file and loaded with require or dofile, will produce a table equivalent to the original data table.

Safe deserialization

When deserializing data from an untrusted source, the deserialized function should be sandboxed before running it.

local data = setfenv(loadstring(serialized), {})()

Binary serialization

Under LuaJIT, string.dump can be used to produce binary output instead of text.

local serialized = string.dump(loadstring(Serialize(data)), true)

The binary output can be deserialized in exactly the same way as the normal textual output.

Caveats/features

• Supports data structures with circular references and self references. Supports positive and negative infinity, and NaN with sign bit preserved.

• Only tables, strings, numbers, and booleans will be stored. Functions, threads, and userdata will not be stored. In order to store a table field, both the key and the value must have storable types.

• Will not throw any errors or log any warnings. Data that cannot be stored will simply be omitted.