Crate structview

Expand description

This crate enables casting references to binary data into references to higher-level data structures, such as structs, unions, and arrays.

The implemented approach is similar to a common pattern used when parsing binary data formats in C, where char *s representing the raw data are directly cast to, for example, struct pointers. This technique has the benefits of being simple and highly efficient. Unfortunately, it is also unsafe, as issues with alignment and integer endianess are usually ignored.

structview avoids these issues by providing a safe and convenient interface to its users: an (automatically derivable) trait View, as well as types for safely viewing integer fields.

Example

use structview::{u32_le, View, ViewError};

#[derive(Clone, Copy, View)]
#[repr(C)]
struct Animal {
    name: [u8; 4],
    number_of_heads: u8,
    number_of_legs: u32_le,
}

fn main() -> Result<(), ViewError> {
    let data = [0x43, 0x61, 0x74, 0x00, 0x01, 0x04, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00];
    let animal = Animal::view(&data)?;

    assert_eq!(animal.name, *b"Cat\x00");
    assert_eq!(animal.number_of_heads, 1);
    assert_eq!(animal.number_of_legs.to_int(), 4);

    Ok(())
}