# `manual-serializer`
Serialization tools for manual buffer processing
[](https://crates.io/crates/manual-serializer)
[](https://crates.io/crates/manual-serializer)
### Overview
This crate is useful when you need to quickly and manually extract data structures from u8 buffers. This can be useful when parsing 3rd-party custom binary data files that have complex data layout making it hard to use existing serializers or structs with `#[repr(packed)]` (as those can be difficult to deal with due to alignment issues).
Beside the basic functions for loading and storing u8,u16,u32,u64 primitives, this serializer provides the following helpers:
* Functions for handling u16le arrays
* Functions for extracting u16 zero terminated strings (such as `PCWSTR` - used in Windows data structures)
* Alignment functions to position the cursor on N-byte boundaries (such as `align_u32()`)
NOTE: This crate currently supports only *little-endian* encoded primitives.
### Example
```rust
#[derive(Debug)]
pub struct Header {
pub magic : usize,
pub version : u16,
pub payload : Vec<u8>,
}
impl TrySerialize for Header {
type Error = Error;
fn try_serialize(&self, dest: &mut Serializer) -> Result<()> {
dest.try_align_u32()?;
dest.try_store_u16le(self.magic as u16)?;
dest.try_store_u16le(self.version)?;
dest.try_store_u32le(self.payload.len() as u32)?;
dest.try_store_u8_slice(&self.payload)?;
Ok(())
}
}
fn store() {
let mut dest = Serializer::new(4096);
let header = Header::default();
dest.try_store(&header)?;
}
impl TryDeserialize for Header {
type Error = Error;
fn try_deserialize(src: &mut Deserializer) -> Result<Header> {
src.try_align_u32()?;
let magic = src.try_load_u16le()? as usize;
let version = src.try_load_u16le()?;
let payload_length = src.try_load_u32le()? as usize;
let payload = src.try_load_u8_vec(payload_length)?.to_vec()?;
Ok(Header{magic, version, payload})
}
}
fn load(data: &[u8], offset: usize) -> Result<(u32,Header)>{
let mut src = Deserializer::new(data);
src.offset(offset)?;
let signature = src.try_load_u32le()?;
let header: Header = src.try_load()?;
Ok((signature,header))
}
```