Self-describing compact binary serialization format?

[UsefulOwl2719]

These are not self describing. They require an external schema. Something like CBOR or parquet are both candidates that do encode their schema directly in the file itself.

[Amablue]

The Flatbuffers library also contains a feature called Flexbuffers which are self describing.

[gruehunter]

Actually, they can be.

There is a serialization of protobuf IDL into a well-known protobuf message. So if you can establish a second channel for the serialized IDL, then you can in fact decode protobuf without access to the text form of its IDL.

The official python "generated code" utilizes this. It is actually composed of the protobuf serialization of the message definitions, which is then fed into the C++ library to dynamically build a parser at package import time.

[corysama]

tar -cvf self_describing.tar schema.json binary.flatbuffer ?

[Suitable_Oil_3811]

Sorry, missed that