This change adds a code generator tool for creating EncodeRLP method
implementations. The generated methods will behave identically to the
reflect-based encoder, but run faster because there is no reflection overhead.
Package rlp now provides the EncoderBuffer type for incremental encoding. This
is used by generated code, but the new methods can also be useful for
hand-written encoders.
There is also experimental support for generating DecodeRLP, and some new
methods have been added to the existing Stream type to support this. Creating
decoders with rlpgen is not recommended at this time because the generated
methods create very poor error reporting.
More detail about package rlp changes:
* rlp: externalize struct field processing / validation
This adds a new package, rlp/internal/rlpstruct, in preparation for the
RLP encoder generator.
I think the struct field rules are subtle enough to warrant extracting
this into their own package, even though it means that a bunch of
adapter code is needed for converting to/from rlpstruct.Type.
* rlp: add more decoder methods (for rlpgen)
This adds new methods on rlp.Stream:
- Uint64, Uint32, Uint16, Uint8, BigInt
- ReadBytes for decoding into []byte
- MoreDataInList - useful for optional list elements
* rlp: expose encoder buffer (for rlpgen)
This exposes the internal encoder buffer type for use in EncodeRLP
implementations.
The new EncoderBuffer type is a sort-of 'opaque handle' for a pointer to
encBuffer. It is implemented this way to ensure the global encBuffer pool
is handled correctly.
* rlp: improve nil pointer handling
In both encoder and decoder, the rules for encoding nil pointers were a
bit hard to understand, and didn't leave much choice. Since RLP allows
two empty values (empty list, empty string), any protocol built on RLP
must choose either of these values to represent the null value in a
certain context.
This change adds choice in the form of two new struct tags, "nilString"
and "nilList". These can be used to specify how a nil pointer value is
encoded. The "nil" tag still exists, but its implementation is now
explicit and defines exactly how nil pointers are handled in a single
place.
Another important change in this commit is how nil pointers and the
Encoder interface interact. The EncodeRLP method was previously called
even on nil values, which was supposed to give users a choice of how
their value would be handled when nil. It turns out this is a stupid
idea. If you create a network protocol containing an object defined in
another package, it's better to be able to say that the object should be
a list or string when nil in the definition of the protocol message
rather than defining the encoding of nil on the object itself.
As of this commit, the encoding rules for pointers now take precedence
over the Encoder interface rule. I think the "nil" tag will work fine
for most cases. For special kinds of objects which are a struct in Go
but strings in RLP, code using the object can specify the desired
encoding of nil using the "nilString" and "nilList" tags.
* rlp: propagate struct field type errors
If a struct contained fields of undecodable type, the encoder and
decoder would panic instead of returning an error. Fix this by
propagating type errors in makeStruct{Writer,Decoder} and add a test.
I'm reasonably confident that the encoding matches the output of
ethutil.Encode for values that it supports. Some of the tests have been
adpated from the Ethereum testing repository.
There are still TODOs in the code.
Felix Lange