This package provides encoding and decoding routines that enable the serialization and deserialization of numerical and array data types provided by numpy using the highly efficient msgpack format. Serialization of Python's native complex data types is also supported.
msgpack-numpy requires msgpack-python and numpy. If you have pip installed on your system, run
pip install msgpack-numpy
to install the package and all dependencies. You can also download the source tarball, unpack it, and run
python setup.py install
from within the source directory.
The easiest way to use msgpack-numpy is to call its monkey patching function after importing the Python msgpack package:
import msgpack
import msgpack_numpy as m
m.patch()
This will automatically force all msgpack serialization and deserialization routines (and other packages that use them) to become numpy-aware. Of course, one can also manually pass the encoder and decoder provided by msgpack-numpy to the msgpack routines:
import msgpack
import msgpack_numpy as m
import numpy as np
x = np.random.rand(5)
x_enc = msgpack.packb(x, default=m.encode)
x_rec = msgpack.unpackb(x_enc, object_hook=m.decode)
msgpack-numpy will try to use the binary (fast) extension in msgpack by default.
If msgpack was not compiled with Cython (or if the MSGPACK_PUREPYTHON
variable is set), it will fall back to using the slower pure Python msgpack
implementation.
The primary design goal of msgpack-numpy is ensuring preservation of numerical data types during msgpack serialization and deserialization. Inclusion of type information in the serialized data necessarily incurs some storage overhead; if preservation of type information is not needed, one may be able to avoid some of this overhead by writing a custom encoder/decoder pair that produces more efficient serializations for those specific use cases.
The latest source code can be obtained from GitHub.
See the included AUTHORS.md file for more information.
This software is licensed under the BSD License. See the included LICENSE.md file for more information.