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SMILE Format

Description​

SMILE (Smile is a Machine-Interchangeable Language for Everything) is a binary data format similar to JSON but more compact. It was developed by the Jackson JSON library team and provides efficient binary serialization of JSON-like data structures.

File Extensions​

  • .smile - SMILE format files

Implementation Details​

Reading​

The SMILE implementation:

  • Uses smile-json library for decoding
  • Reads binary SMILE data
  • Supports single documents or arrays
  • Converts SMILE data to Python objects

Writing​

Writing support:

  • Encodes Python objects to SMILE format
  • Writes binary SMILE data
  • Supports nested structures

Key Features​

  • Binary format: More compact than JSON
  • JSON-compatible: Same data structures as JSON
  • Nested data: Supports complex nested structures
  • Type preservation: Maintains data types

Usage​

from iterable import open_iterable

# Basic reading
source = open_iterable('data.smile')
for row in source:
    print(row)
source.close()

# Writing
dest = open_iterable('output.smile', mode='w')
dest.write({'name': 'John', 'age': 30})
dest.close()

Parameters​

No specific parameters required.

Limitations​

  1. smile-json dependency: Requires smile-json package
  2. Binary format: Not human-readable
  3. Memory usage: Entire file may be loaded into memory
  4. Less common: Not as widely used as JSON or MessagePack

Compression Support​

SMILE files can be compressed with all supported codecs:

  • GZip (.smile.gz)
  • BZip2 (.smile.bz2)
  • LZMA (.smile.xz)
  • LZ4 (.smile.lz4)
  • ZIP (.smile.zip)
  • Brotli (.smile.br)
  • ZStandard (.smile.zst)

Use Cases​

  • Binary JSON: When JSON is too verbose
  • Data storage: Efficient binary storage
  • Jackson integration: Working with Jackson-based systems