# fastnbt crate
Documentation: [docs.rs](https://docs.rs/crate/fastnbt)
Fast deserializer and serializer for *Minecraft: Java Edition*'s NBT format.
Includes a `Value` type for serializing or deserializing any NBT. `Value`
correctly preserves the exact NBT structure.
The derserializer allows you to avoid allocations where possible. Strings can be
deserialized to `&'a str` where `'a` is the lifetime of the data being
deserialized. The `borrow` module contains more types for avoiding allocations.
[See the documentation](https://docs.rs/crate/fastnbt) for more information.
```toml
[dependencies]
fastnbt = "2"
```
`fastnbt` follows Semver, some things that this project does *not* count as a
breaking change are:
* Minimum Rust version change. Outside of corporate environments this should not
be too difficult, and I don't see much need for NBT in those environments.
* Improving the (de)serializer such that valid NBT that did not (de)serialize, then
(de)serializes. Any of these cases I consider a bug.
* Data format when serializing types from fastnbt/fastanvil to other formats.
Types in fastnbt implement `serde::Serialise` to enable spitting out to other
data formats, but may change structure in future.
Changes that make `fastnbt` incompatible with WebAssembly *are* considered
breaking changes.
# Comparison to other NBT crates
There are other crates for NBT out there, this tries to give an honest
comparison to them.
The Hematite `nbt` crate was the only other crate I found with serde
deserialization.
* Both crates support serialization and deserialization with
serde.
* They are not interoperable due to requiring custom handling of NBT Array
types.
* They both handle Minecraft's (actually Java's) specialised Unicode.
* fastnbt supports borrowing from the underlying bytes being deserialized.
* fastnbt's `Value` type can round-trip deserialize-serialize NBT arrays.