Serialization

Solace's wire format — encoding objects to bytes and decoding bytes back — runs through a small serializer/deserializer framework under lib/solace/serializers/. Every core primitive (Transaction, Message, Instruction, and AddressLookupTable) has a matching serializer and deserializer.

You usually go through the primitives

You rarely call serializers directly. The primitives expose them:

base64 = tx.serialize              # Transaction → base64 (via TransactionSerializer)
tx     = Solace::Transaction.from(base64) # base64 → Transaction (via TransactionDeserializer)

serialize/to_binary and the .from constructors are provided by the Solace::Concerns::BinarySerializable mixin, which wires each class to its SERIALIZER and DESERIALIZER.

The framework

Both base classes are step-driven: a subclass declares an ordered list of steps (method names), and the base runs them in sequence.

BaseSerializer

class MySerializer < Solace::Serializers::BaseSerializer
  self.steps = %i[encode_header encode_body]

  def encode_header = [...]  # each step returns bytes
  def encode_body   = [...]
end

MySerializer.new(record).call # => base64 String

BaseDeserializer

class MyDeserializer < Solace::Serializers::BaseDeserializer
  self.steps        = %i[read_header read_body]
  self.record_class = MyRecord

  def read_header = ... # read from self.io (a StringIO), populate self.record
  def read_body   = ...
end

MyDeserializer.new(StringIO.new(binary)).call # => MyRecord

Deserializers read from a StringIO — get one from RPC base64 with Solace::Utils::Codecs.base64_to_bytestream.

Bundled serializers

Primitive	Serializer	Deserializer
Transaction	TransactionSerializer	TransactionDeserializer
Message	MessageSerializer	MessageDeserializer
Instruction	InstructionSerializer	InstructionDeserializer
Address Lookup Table	AddressLookupTableSerializer	AddressLookupTableDeserializer

They handle both legacy and versioned layouts, using the codecs for the integer and base58/base64 encodings. The step-driven design is also the extension point: a new on-chain account type gets serialized by declaring its fields as steps.