Crate serde_cbor [] [src]

CBOR and serialization.

What is CBOR?

CBOR is a way to encode data in a space-efficient and fast binary format. CBORs data-model is a superset of the JSONs.

A simple object describing a person in diagnostic notation (it is actually JSON plus some annotations) looks like

{
    "FirstName": "John",
    "LastName": "Doe",
    "Age": 43,
    "Address": {
        "Street": "Downing Street 10",
        "City": "London",
        "Country": "Great Britain"
    },
    "PhoneNumbers": [
        "+44 1234567",
        "+44 2345678"
    ]
}

The CBOR encoded object with comments in hexadecimal notation looks like

a5                                      # map(5)
   69                                   # text(9)
      46697273744e616d65                # "FirstName"
   64                                   # text(4)
      4a6f686e                          # "John"
   68                                   # text(8)
      4c6173744e616d65                  # "LastName"
   63                                   # text(3)
      446f65                            # "Doe"
   63                                   # text(3)
      416765                            # "Age"
   18 2b                                # unsigned(43)
   67                                   # text(7)
      41646472657373                    # "Address"
   a3                                   # map(3)
      66                                # text(6)
         537472656574                   # "Street"
      71                                # text(17)
         446f776e696e6720537472656574203130 # "Downing Street 10"
      64                                # text(4)
         43697479                       # "City"
      66                                # text(6)
         4c6f6e646f6e                   # "London"
      67                                # text(7)
         436f756e747279                 # "Country"
      6d                                # text(13)
         4772656174204272697461696e     # "Great Britain"
   6c                                   # text(12)
      50686f6e654e756d62657273          # "PhoneNumbers"
   82                                   # array(2)
      6b                                # text(11)
         2b34342031323334353637         # "+44 1234567"
      6b                                # text(11)
         2b34342032333435363738         # "+44 2345678"

While the JSON encoding is 174 bytes long the CBOR representation is only 141 bytes long. This is 19% shorter! Sometimes compression will even better, but never CBOR will be longer than the corresponding JSON. More importantly CBOR supports binary data, custom data tyes, annotations for dates, times and expected encoding and is faster to serialize and deserialize. It can even be used on embedded devices.

Type-based Serialization and Deserialization

Serde provides a mechanism for low boilerplate serialization & deserialization of values to and from CBOR via the serialization API. To be able to serialize a piece of data, it must implement the serde::Serialize trait. To be able to deserialize a piece of data, it must implement the serde::Deserialize trait. Serde provides provides an annotation to automatically generate the code for these traits: #[derive(Serialize, Deserialize)].

The CBOR API also provides an enum serde_cbor::Value

Examples

Read a CBOR value that is known to be a map of string keys to string values and print it.

use std::collections::HashMap;
use serde_cbor::from_slice;

let slice = b"\xa5aaaAabaBacaCadaDaeaE";
let value: HashMap<String, String> = from_slice(slice).unwrap();
println!("{:?}", value); // {"e": "E", "d": "D", "a": "A", "c": "C", "b": "B"}

Read a general CBOR value with an unknown content.

use serde_cbor::{from_slice, Value};

let slice = b"\x82\x01\xa1aaab";
let value: Value = from_slice(slice).unwrap();
println!("{:?}", value); // Array([U64(1), Object({String("a"): String("b")})])

Serialize an object.

use std::collections::HashMap;
use serde_cbor::to_vec;

let mut programming_languages = HashMap::new();
programming_languages.insert("rust", vec!["safe", "concurrent", "fast"]);
programming_languages.insert("python", vec!["powerful", "friendly", "open"]);
programming_languages.insert("js", vec!["lightweight", "interpreted", "object-oriented"]);
let encoded = to_vec(&programming_languages);

Reexports

pub use de::from_slice;
pub use de::from_reader;
pub use error::Error;
pub use error::Result;
pub use ser::to_vec;
pub use value::Value;
pub use value::ObjectKey;

Modules

de

CBOR deserialization.

error

CBOR errors.

ser

CBOR serializisation.

value

CBOR values and keys.