Crate structview

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};

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

fn main() -> Result<(), structview::Error> {
    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(())
}

Structs

I16	View of an i16 value.
I32	View of an i32 value.
I64	View of an i64 value.
U16	View of an u16 value.
U32	View of an u32 value.
U64	View of an u64 value.

Enums

Error

Error type returned when creating a view fails.

Traits

View	Trait for viewing byte data as a higher-level representation.

Type Definitions

i16_le	View of a little-endian i16 value.
i16_be	View of a big-endian i16 value.
i32_le	View of a little-endian i32 value.
i32_be	View of a big-endian i32 value.
i64_le	View of a little-endian i64 value.
i64_be	View of a big-endian i64 value.
u16_le	View of a little-endian u16 value.
u16_be	View of a big-endian u16 value.
u32_le	View of a little-endian u32 value.
u32_be	View of a big-endian u32 value.
u64_le	View of a little-endian u64 value.
u64_be	View of a big-endian u64 value.

Derive Macros

View	Derive structview::View on a struct or union.