In this article, we’ll be talking about Serde, how you can use it in your Rust application, as well as some more advanced tips and tricks. What is serde? The Rust crate is used to efficiently serialize and deserialize data in many formats. It does this by providing two traits you can use, aptly named and . Being one of the most well-known crates in the ecosystem, it currently supports (de)serialization to over 20 types. serde Deserialize Serialize To get started, you’ll want to install the crate into your application: Rust cargo add serde Using serde Deserializing and Serializing data The simple way to serialize and deserialize data is by adding the serde feature. This adds a macro that you can use to implement and automatically - you can do this with the flag ( for short): derive Deserialize Serialize --features -F cargo add serde -F derive Then, we can add a macro to any struct or enum that we want to implement or for: Deserialize Serialize use serde::{Deserialize, Serialize};

#[derive(Deserialize, Serialize)]
struct MyStruct {
    message: String,
    // ... the rest of your fields
} This allows us to use any crate with support to convert between said formats. As an example, let’s use to convert to and from JSON format: serde serde-json use serde_json::json;
use serde::{Deserialize, Serialize};

#[derive(Deserialize, Serialize)]
struct MyStruct {
    message: String,
}

fn to_and_from_json() {
    let json = json!({"message": "Hello world!"});
    let my_struct: MyStruct = serde_json::from_str(&json).unwrap();

    assert_eq!(my_struct, MyStruct { message: "Hello world!".to_string());

    assert!(serde_json::to_string(my_struct).is_ok());
} If you’re interested in using for your Rust application, we have an article talking about JSON parsing libraries, which you can check out serde-json here. We can also deserialize and serialize to/from many sources, including from a file stream I/O, a JSON byte array, and more! Implementing Deserialize and Serialize manually In order to better understand how works under the hood, we can also implement and manually. This is quite complicated, but for now, we will stick with a simple implementation. Here is a simple implementation for serializing an primitive type: serde Deserialize Serialize i32 use serde::{Serializer, Serialize};

impl Serialize for i32 {
    fn serialize<S>(&self, serializer: S) -> Result<S::Ok, S::Error>
    where
        S: Serializer,
    {
        serializer.serialize_i32(*self)
    }
} To be able to convert the type, internally requires us to use a type that implements . To implement for a type that isn’t directly a primitive, we can extend this by serializing it into a primitive and then converting it into whatever type we want from the primitive. If we want custom serialization for structs, we can also do the same with the use of the trait: serde Serializer Serialize SerializeStruct use serde::ser::{Serialize, Serializer, SerializeStruct};

struct Color {
    r: u8,
    g: u8,
    b: u8,
}

impl Serialize for Color {
    fn serialize<S>(&self, serializer: S) -> Result<S::Ok, S::Error>
    where
        S: Serializer,
    {
        // 3 is the number of fields in the struct.
        let mut state = serializer.serialize_struct("Color", 3)?;
        state.serialize_field("r", &self.r)?;
        state.serialize_field("g", &self.g)?;
        state.serialize_field("b", &self.b)?;
        state.end()
    }
} Note that to serialize a field, the field type also needs to implement . If you have a custom type that doesn't implement , you will either need to implement or use a derive macro (if the struct/enum type holds types that all implement ). Serialize Serialize Serialize Serialize Serialize The trait is a little bit different and is a fair bit more complicated to implement. To be able to deserialize to a type, the type itself needs to implement , which means that there are a number of types that can’t use this trait (for example ) because they are unsized types. To deserialize a type, you also need to use a type that implements the trait. Deserialize Sized &str Visitor The trait uses the Visitor design pattern in Rust. This means that it encapsulates an algorithm that operates over a collection of same-sized objects. It allows you to write multiple different algorithms for operating over the data without needing to change any original functionality. You can find out more about this Visitor here. Below is an example for a type that attempts to deserialize multiple types to String: MessageVisitor use std::fmt;

use serde::de::{self, Visitor};

struct MessageVisitor;

impl<'de> Visitor<'de> for MessageVisitor {
    type Value = String;

    fn expecting(&self, formatter: &mut fmt::Formatter) -> fmt::Result {
        formatter.write_str("A message that can either be deserialized from an i32 or String")
    }

    fn visit_string<E>(self, value: String) -> Result<Self::Value, E>
    where
        E: de::Error,
    {
        Ok(value)
    }

    fn visit_str<E>(self, value: &str) -> Result<Self::Value, E>
    where
        E: de::Error,
    {
        Ok(value.to_owned())
    }

    fn visit_i32<E>(self, value: i32) -> Result<Self::Value, E>
    where
        E: de::Error,
    {
        Ok(value.to_string())
    }
} As you can see, the implementation is quite large! However, it also allows us to make the implementation much simpler. By implementing the trait, we can pass the type that implements it to our method and then deserialize JSON into our struct: Visitor Deserialize use serde::{Deserialize, Deserializer};

impl<'de> Deserialize<'de> for MyStruct {
    fn deserialize<D>(deserializer: D) -> Result<Self, D::Error>
    where
        D: Deserializer<'de>,
    {
		// note: don't use unwrap in production!
        let message = deserializer.deserialize_string(MessageVisitor).unwrap();
        Ok(Self { message })
    }
} There is also documentation on deserializing structs, which you can find However, generally speaking, it is recommended that you use the feature macros as the manual implementation (as seen on the page itself) is quite large. The implementation involves mostly using a visitor that can visit a map or sequence and then iterate through the elements to deserialize it. here. derive Using serde attributes When it comes to serde, the crate also has a number of useful attribute macros that we can use on our types to allow things like field renaming when deserializing a field or serializing to a struct. One of the best examples of this would be when you’re interacting with an API written in a language that may have a key that is a reserved keyword in Rust. You can add a attribute macro like so: #[serde(rename)] use serde::{Deserialize, Serialize};

#[derive(Deserialize, Serialize)]
pub struct MyStruct {
    #[serde(rename = "type")]
    kind: String
} This allows you to get around the issue! You can also rename all of your fields to another casing by using the attribute: rename_all use serde::{Deserialize, Serialize};

#[derive(Deserialize, Serialize)]
#[serde(rename_all = "camelCase")]
pub struct MyStruct {
    my_message: String
} Now, when you serialize this struct, should automatically turn into ! Perfect for working with APIs written in other languages or with different conventions. my_message myMessage If you’d prefer not to wrap fields in , you can also implement default values by using . This simply allows fields to be filled in with default values instead of automatically erroring out. You can also use to be able to point to functions for providing the automatic default. For example, this struct and function: Option #[serde(default)] #[serde(default = "path")] use serde::{Deserialize, Serialize};

#[derive(Deserialize, Serialize)]
pub struct MyStruct {
    #[serde(path = "my_function")]
    my_message: String,
}

fn my_function() -> String {
    "Hello world!".to_string()
} also offers other useful attributes, like being able to deny unknown fields using on top of the struct. This allows you to make sure that the struct is exactly as-is when serializing and deserializing. serde #[serde(deny_unknown_fields)] Deserializing and Serializing enums Let’s examine this enum type: use serde::{Deserialize, Serialize};

#[derive(Deserialize, Serialize)]
enum MyEnum {
    Data { id: String, data: Value },
    SomeOtherData { id: i32, name: String }
} Note that when converting to and from this enum, it can take two options: A String field named and a JSON value with the key (this can be a map, a value or anything that the value can hold) id data Json An field named and a field named i32 id String name You can then match the enum variant for further processing. When the first enum variant is written in JSON, you can see that it should correspond with this: {
    "Data": {
        "id": "your_id_here",
        "data": { .. }
    }
} This type of data is “externally tagged” - meaning the data is characterized by the identifier being on the outside of the JSON object. We can add inline tagging so that the identifier is on the inside of the crate - let’s have a look at what this would look like: use serde::{Deserialize, Serialize};

#[derive(Deserialize, Serialize)]
#[serde(tag = "type")]
enum MyEnum {
    Data { id: String, data: Value },
    SomeOtherData { id: i32, name: String }
} Now the JSON representation looks like this: {
    "type": "Data",
    "id": "your_id_here",
    "data": { .. }
} Interested in reading more? The documentation has a page on tagging, which you can find serde here. Crates that work well with Serde serde_with is a crate that provides custom de/serialization helpers to use with 's annotation. Normally, you can define a module for the (de)serializer to use that follows a custom module for custom (de)serialization: serde_with serde with #[derive(Deserialize, Serialize)]
pub struct MyStruct {
    #[serde(with = "my_module")]
    my_message: String
} When using , it works by replacing the annotation with a new one called . With this new attribute macro you can do quite a few things: serde_with with serde_as De/serializing a type using and traits. Display FromStr Support arrays larger than 32 elements. Skip serializing empty Option types. Deserialize a comma-separated list into a . Vec<String> To use , you need to add it to your Cargo.toml either manually or by using the following command: serde_with cargo add serde_with Then you need to add to the type you want to use it for, like so: serde_as use serde_with::{serde_as, DisplayFromStr};
#[serde_as]
#[derive(Deserialize, Serialize)]
struct MyStruct {
    // Serialize with Display, deserialize with FromStr
    #[serde_as(as = "DisplayFromStr")]
    my_number: u8,
} This struct lets you convert to/from a string but have the type itself in your Rust struct be ! Pretty useful, right? u8 This crate also comes with a that you can use to fully capitalize on . Overall, a strong companion crate for . guide serde_with serde serde_bytes is a crate that allows for optimized handling of and types - while is capable of dealing with these types by itself, some formats can be de/serialized more efficiently. It’s quite simple to use - you just add it to your Cargo.toml and then add it via the annotation like so: serde_bytes &[u8] Vec<u8> serde #[serde(with = "serde_bytes")] use serde::{Deserialize, Serialize};

#[derive(Deserialize, Serialize)]
struct MyStruct {
    #[serde(with = "serde_bytes")]
    byte_buf: Vec<u8>,
} Overall, an easy-to-use and simple crate that improves performance without much knowledge required. Finishing up I hope you enjoyed reading about Serde! It's a pretty powerful Rust crate and forms the backbone of most Rust applications. If you’re interested in more, feel free to come and check our blog out at Shuttle here (full disclosure, I work for Shuttle as a DevRel Engineer!) Also published . here

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