serde_bytes

Wrapper types to enable optimized handling of &[u8] and Vec<u8>.

Without specialization, Rust forces Serde to treat &[u8] just like any other slice and Vec<u8> just like any other vector. In reality this particular slice and vector can often be serialized and deserialized in a more efficient, compact representation in many formats.

When working with such a format, you can opt into specialized handling of &[u8] by wrapping it in serde_bytes::Bytes and Vec<u8> by wrapping it in serde_bytes::ByteBuf.

This crate supports the Serde with attribute to enable efficient handling of &[u8] and Vec<u8> in structs without needing a wrapper type.

#[macro_use]
extern crate serde_derive;

extern crate serde;
extern crate serde_bytes;

#[derive(Serialize)]
struct Efficient<'a> {
    #[serde(with = "serde_bytes")]
    bytes: &'a [u8],

    #[serde(with = "serde_bytes")]
    byte_buf: Vec<u8>,
}

#[derive(Serialize, Deserialize)]
struct Packet {
    #[serde(with = "serde_bytes")]
    payload: Vec<u8>,
}

Rust support for specialization is being tracked in rust-lang/rust#31844. Once it lands in the stable compiler Serde will be deprecating these wrapper types in favor of optimizing &[u8] and Vec<u8> out of the box.

License

Serde is licensed under either of

• Apache License, Version 2.0, (LICENSE-APACHE or http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0)
• MIT license (LICENSE-MIT or http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT)

at your option.

Contribution

Unless you explicitly state otherwise, any contribution intentionally submitted for inclusion in Serde by you, as defined in the Apache-2.0 license, shall be dual licensed as above, without any additional terms or conditions.