Serialization

Serialization is much simpler than it used to be. Before, this set of libraries had its own serialization scheme. This was generally a bad idea. It was alright for sending strings, and good for a proof of concept, but it would have taken far too much effort to maintain.

Now we rely on msgpack , with some small modifications. Essentially, the process is capturable with the following JavaScript:

function serialize(msg, compressions)   {
    let to_serialize = [msg.type, msg.sender, msg.time, ...msg.payload];
    let bare_serialized = msgpack.encode(to_serialize);
    let checksum = SHA256(bare_serialized);  // should return binary digest
    let payload = compress(checksum + bare_serialized, compressions);
    let header = pack_big_endian_uint32(payload.length);
    return header + payload;
}