Implementation:Alibaba MNN FlatBuffers IDL Header

Knowledge Sources	Alibaba_MNN FlatBuffers
Domains	Serialization, Schema_Parsing
Last Updated	2026-02-10 12:00 GMT

Overview

Header defining the schema parser, IDL representation structures, and code generation interfaces for FlatBuffers.

Description

idl.h declares the in-memory representation of FlatBuffers schemas after parsing. It defines types such as Parser, Definition, FieldDef, StructDef, EnumDef, and ServiceDef that model every element of a .fbs schema file. This header also provides the CodeGenerator interface used by all language-specific backends to emit source code from parsed schemas.

Usage

Vendored dependency used internally by MNN for model serialization. Not directly imported by end users.

Code Reference

Source Location

• Repository: Alibaba_MNN
• File: 3rd_party/flatbuffers/include/flatbuffers/idl.h
• Lines: 1-973

Signature

class Parser;
struct Definition;
struct FieldDef;
struct StructDef;
struct EnumDef;

Import

#include "flatbuffers/idl.h"

I/O Contract

Input	Output
Raw .fbs schema text	Parsed StructDef, EnumDef, ServiceDef objects in Parser
Parsed schema tree	Language-specific generated source code via CodeGenerator

Usage Examples

#include "flatbuffers/idl.h"

flatbuffers::Parser parser;
bool ok = parser.Parse(schema_text);
if (ok) {
    for (auto *s : parser.structs_.vec) {
        // Iterate over parsed struct definitions
    }
}

Related Pages

• Environment:Alibaba_MNN_CPU_Build_Environment