Buffer

Kotlin Multiplatform library for platform-agnostic byte buffer management

Buffer provides a unified API for managing byte buffers across all Kotlin platforms, delegating to native implementations to avoid memory copies.

Why Buffer?

• Zero-copy performance: Direct delegation to platform-native buffers (ByteBuffer, NSData, Uint8Array)
• Kotlin Multiplatform: Single API works across JVM, Android, iOS, JS, WASM, and Native
• Buffer Pooling: High-performance buffer reuse for network I/O and protocol parsing
• Stream Processing: Handle fragmented data across chunk boundaries
• Optimized Operations: Bulk comparison, search (indexOf), and fill operations using SIMD-like techniques

Platform Implementations

Platform	Native Type	Notes
JVM	java.nio.ByteBuffer	Use Direct buffers for zero-copy I/O
Android	ByteBuffer + SharedMemory	IPC via Parcelable
iOS/macOS	NSData / NSMutableData	Foundation integration
JavaScript	Uint8Array	SharedArrayBuffer support
WASM	LinearBuffer (native memory) / ByteArrayBuffer	Zero-copy JS interop
Linux	ByteArray	Native target

Quick Example

import com.ditchoom.buffer.PlatformBuffer
import com.ditchoom.buffer.AllocationZone
import com.ditchoom.buffer.ByteOrder

// Allocate a buffer
val buffer = PlatformBuffer.allocate(
    size = 1024,
    zone = AllocationZone.Direct,
    byteOrder = ByteOrder.BIG_ENDIAN
)

// Write data
buffer.writeInt(42)
buffer.writeString("Hello, Buffer!")

// Prepare for reading
buffer.resetForRead()

// Read data
val number = buffer.readInt()      // 42
val text = buffer.readString(14)   // "Hello, Buffer!"

Installation

Add to your build.gradle.kts (see Maven Central for the latest version):

dependencies {
    implementation("com.ditchoom:buffer:<latest-version>")
}

Next Steps

• Getting Started - Installation and basic usage
• Core Concepts - Understanding buffers, positions, and limits
• Recipes - Common patterns and examples
• Performance - Optimization tips