[FeatureRequest] More type out of box

[loynoir]

Background

Migrate from msgpack-lite, which has support for many types out of box.

And I had a look at types at @msgpack/msgpack/dist/encode.d.ts, seems everything is also OK out-of-box.

export declare function encode<ContextType = undefined>(
  // seems everything is OK out-of-box
  value: unknown, 
  options?: EncodeOptions<SplitUndefined<ContextType>>
): Uint8Array;

Reproduce

var msgpack=require('@msgpack/msgpack')
var nop=x=>msgpack.decode(msgpack.encode(x))

Actual

> nop({x:Buffer.from('x'), y:new ArrayBuffer(0), z:new Error('msg')})
{ x: Uint8Array(1) [ 120 ], y: {}, z: {} }

Expected

> msgpack = require('msgpack-lite')
> nop({x:Buffer.from('x'), y:new ArrayBuffer(0), z:new Error('msg')})
{
  x: <Buffer 78>,
  y: ArrayBuffer { [Uint8Contents]: <>, byteLength: 0 },
  z: Error: msg
}

Suggestion

export declare function encode<ContextType = undefined>(
  value: unknown, 
  options?: EncodeOptions<SplitUndefined<ContextType>>
): Uint8Array;

export declare function encodeOutOfBox<ContextType = undefined>(
  // any types are tested, `decode(encode(value))` should be same out of box
  value: TESTED_TYPES, 
  options?: EncodeOptions<SplitUndefined<ContextType>>
): Uint8Array;

[loynoir]

Hi, @gfx

Are there any plans to support more types out of box in the future? Are there any plans to transplant 24 types supported by msgpack-lite, which haven't updated since 2016?

https://github.com/kawanet/msgpack-lite/blob/master/lib/ext-packer.js

https://github.com/kawanet/msgpack-lite/blob/master/lib/ext-unpacker.js

[kefniark]

Same there, been migrating a project from msgpack-lite, and the lack of TypedArray was really annoying to deal with. Took me some time to figure why it mostly worked but only some fields were ExtData. So I end up writing my own codec extension and finally it works (my data is backward compatible with the one previously generated with msgpack-lite).

But the process was really annoying and time consuming, for basic JS types like Uint8Array and Int32Array.

So 👍 to get more types, even if its only as an optional typedarray extension code.