Serialization

File Format
Name	Serialization
Ontology	Electronic File Formats Serialization
No, I said serial, idiot.

Serialization is used to transform data structures (as used within a program, in whatever native formats might be used by the programming language the program is in) into a file or data stream of standardized format to be saved for later use, or transmitted through a network to be used by a different program elsewhere.

• Bencode (used by BitTorrent)
• DER (Distinguished Encoding Rules)
• IWA (Apple iWork serialization; .iwa)
• JSON (.json)
• Microsoft XNA Compiled Format (.xnb)
• Property List (.plist)
• Protobuf (Protocol Buffers; a Google format also used within IWA)
• YAML (.yaml)
• Pickle (Python 2)

See Also

• Text-based data
• Metaformats
• Databases
• Markup