Crate fcode[][src]

The fcode crate delivers a simple binary serialization strategy for the serde framework. Wire format resembles protobufs, but doesn’t have field tags. Note that evolution depends on lexical field ordering; you can never change the lexical order of fields, and fields must always be added to the end of a struct/enum.

The following evolutions are explicitly supported:

  • Add a field to the back of a struct. Deserialization of a longer struct is always possible, but in order to allow new code to deserialize an old object, added fields must be marked with #[serde(default)].
  • Extend a tuple struct, in the same way, except extending from a 1-field tuple (newtype) to something longer.
  • Extend a struct enum variant or tuple enum variant in the same way.
  • Change an anonymous tuple into a named tuple with the same field types.
  • Change a named or anonymous tuple into a struct, as long as fields with the same type appear in the same order.
  • Change a tuple enum variant into a struct variant, as long as fields with the same type appear in the same order.
  • Change any value into a newtype struct (i32 -> Foo(i32)).
  • Change a struct variant or tuple variant into a newtype variant containing a struct/tuple with the same layout Foo { x: i32, y: i32 } -> Foo(Foo) (where struct Foo { x: i32, y: i32 })
  • Change the size of an integer (e.g. i16 -> i32). Overly large values will cause deserialization error.
  • Change the size of a float (f32 -> f64) – conversion back from f64 to f32 may silently overflow to infinity.
  • Change a bool to an integer – false maps to 0, true maps to anything not 0.
  • Change a unit to bool (maps to false) or an integer (maps to 0).
  • Change string to bytes. Non-UTF8 bytes will cause error when deserializing to string.
  • Extend an enum with a new variant. To make this backwards compatible, the “old” code should have a unit variant marked with #[serde(other)]. It is therefore a good idea to always add such other / fallback variant for enums that may be extended in the future. The alternative is to always upgrade both sides before actually using the new variant.

Explicitly not supported:

  • Change a newtype struct (Foo(x)) to a tuple (Foo(x,y)).
  • Change the signedness of an integer (i32 -> u32).
  • Conditional skipping of fields (will panic), or skipping fields in serialization only (will cause deserialization badness).
  • Serialization of sequences with unknown upfront length (e.g. iterators; will panic).

Fields can be deprecated by changing them to unit in the receiver first, and then in the sender once all receivers have been upgraded. Unit deserialisation blindly skips a field without actually checking the wire type. A unit field takes a single byte on the wire. Vice versa, a field can be “undeprecated” (re-use of deprecated slot) by changing the sender before the receiver.

Structs

Deserializer
Serializer

Enums

Error

Functions

from_bytes

Deserialize a value from a byte slice.

from_bytes_more_data

Deserialize a value from a byte slice that may have more data.

to_bytes

Serialize a value into a new byte vector.

to_writer

Serialize a value to a io::Write implementation.

Type Definitions

Result