Cerealization and RPC with Cap'n Proto
Channel: Utah Cpp Programmers
Date: 2022-09-22

Cap'n Proto is a serialization and RPC (remote procedure call) framework built by the primary author of Google's Protobuf. "Cap’n Proto is an insanely fast data interchange format and capability-based RPC system. Think JSON, except binary. Or think Protocol Buffers, except faster." (Cap'n Proto's web site refers to serialization as "cerealization" in a tongue-in-cheek fashion.)

Cap'n Proto is designed for the use case of efficiently transmitting complex message structures across the network as part of a distributed system. So while it is a serialization method like converting your data structures to JSON, it is more explicitly designed for network oriented messages and remote procedure call scenarios. It is also designed with efficiency in mind.

This month, Richard Thomson will give us an introduction to Cap'n Proto using a fictional comic book database as an example. We'll use Cap'n Proto to model some simple CRUD (create, read, update and delete) operations over RPC. We'll look at how application data structures are represented using Cap'n Proto.

Cap'n Proto: https://capnproto.org/

Future topics: https://utahcpp.wordpress.com/future-meeting-topics/
Past topics: https://utahcpp.wordpress.com/past-meeting-topics/