Crate serde_with

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This crate provides custom de/serialization helpers to use in combination with serde’s with-annotation and with the improved serde_as-annotation. Some common use cases are:

  • De/Serializing a type using the Display and FromStr traits, e.g., for u8, url::Url, or mime::Mime. Check DisplayFromStr for details.
  • Support for arrays larger than 32 elements or using const generics. With serde_as large arrays are supported, even if they are nested in other types. [bool; 64], Option<[u8; M]>, and Box<[[u8; 64]; N]> are all supported, as this examples shows.
  • Skip serializing all empty Option types with #[skip_serializing_none].
  • Apply a prefix to each field name of a struct, without changing the de/serialize implementations of the struct using with_prefix!.
  • Deserialize a comma separated list like #hash,#tags,#are,#great into a Vec<String>. Check the documentation for serde_with::StringWithSeparator::<CommaSeparator, T>.

Getting Help

Check out the user guide to find out more tips and tricks about this crate.

For further help using this crate you can open a new discussion or ask on users.rust-lang.org. For bugs, please open a new issue on GitHub.

Use serde_with in your Project

# Add the current version to your Cargo.toml
cargo add serde_with

The crate contains different features for integration with other common crates. Check the feature flags section for information about all available features.

Examples

Annotate your struct or enum to enable the custom de/serializer. The #[serde_as] attribute must be placed before the #[derive].

The as is analogous to the with attribute of serde. You mirror the type structure of the field you want to de/serialize. You can specify converters for the inner types of a field, e.g., Vec<DisplayFromStr>. The default de/serialization behavior can be restored by using _ as a placeholder, e.g., BTreeMap<_, DisplayFromStr>.

DisplayFromStr

Rustexplorer

#[serde_as]
#[derive(Deserialize, Serialize)]
struct Foo {
    // Serialize with Display, deserialize with FromStr
    #[serde_as(as = "DisplayFromStr")]
    bar: u8,
}

// This will serialize
Foo {bar: 12}

// into this JSON
{"bar": "12"}

Large and const-generic arrays

serde does not support arrays with more than 32 elements or using const-generics. The serde_as attribute allows circumventing this restriction, even for nested types and nested arrays.

On top of it, [u8; N] (aka, bytes) can use the specialized "Bytes" for efficiency much like the serde_bytes crate.

Rustexplorer

#[serde_as]
#[derive(Deserialize, Serialize)]
struct Arrays<const N: usize, const M: usize> {
    #[serde_as(as = "[_; N]")]
    constgeneric: [bool; N],

    #[serde_as(as = "Box<[[_; 64]; N]>")]
    nested: Box<[[u8; 64]; N]>,

    #[serde_as(as = "Option<[_; M]>")]
    optional: Option<[u8; M]>,

    #[serde_as(as = "Bytes")]
    bytes: [u8; M],
}

// This allows us to serialize a struct like this
let arrays: Arrays<100, 128> = Arrays {
    constgeneric: [true; 100],
    nested: Box::new([[111; 64]; 100]),
    optional: Some([222; 128]),
    bytes: [0x42; 128],
};
assert!(serde_json::to_string(&arrays).is_ok());

skip_serializing_none

This situation often occurs with JSON, but other formats also support optional fields. If many fields are optional, putting the annotations on the structs can become tedious. The #[skip_serializing_none] attribute must be placed before the #[derive].

Rustexplorer

#[skip_serializing_none]
#[derive(Deserialize, Serialize)]
struct Foo {
    a: Option<usize>,
    b: Option<usize>,
    c: Option<usize>,
    d: Option<usize>,
    e: Option<usize>,
    f: Option<usize>,
    g: Option<usize>,
}

// This will serialize
Foo {a: None, b: None, c: None, d: Some(4), e: None, f: None, g: Some(7)}

// into this JSON
{"d": 4, "g": 7}

Advanced serde_as usage

This example is mainly supposed to highlight the flexibility of the serde_as-annotation compared to serde’s with-annotation. More details about serde_as can be found in the user guide.

use std::time::Duration;

#[serde_as]
#[derive(Deserialize, Serialize)]
enum Foo {
    Durations(
        // Serialize them into a list of number as seconds
        #[serde_as(as = "Vec<DurationSeconds>")]
        Vec<Duration>,
    ),
    Bytes {
        // We can treat a Vec like a map with duplicates.
        // JSON only allows string keys, so convert i32 to strings
        // The bytes will be hex encoded
        #[serde_as(as = "Map<DisplayFromStr, Hex>")]
        bytes: Vec<(i32, Vec<u8>)>,
    }
}

// This will serialize
Foo::Durations(
    vec![Duration::new(5, 0), Duration::new(3600, 0), Duration::new(0, 0)]
)
// into this JSON
{
    "Durations": [5, 3600, 0]
}

// and serializes
Foo::Bytes {
    bytes: vec![
        (1, vec![0, 1, 2]),
        (-100, vec![100, 200, 255]),
        (1, vec![0, 111, 222]),
    ],
}
// into this JSON
{
    "Bytes": {
        "bytes": {
            "1": "000102",
            "-100": "64c8ff",
            "1": "006fde"
        }
    }
}

Modules

  • de
    Module for DeserializeAs implementations
  • formats
    Specify the format and how lenient the deserialization is
  • rust
    De/Serialization for Rust’s builtin and std types
  • ser
    Module for SerializeAs implementations

Macros

  • flattened_maybe
    Support deserializing from flattened and non-flattened representation
  • serde_conv
    Create new conversion adapters from functions
  • with_prefix
    Serialize with an added prefix on every field name and deserialize by trimming away the prefix.

Structs

Traits

  • DeserializeAs
    A data structure that can be deserialized from any data format supported by Serde, analogue to Deserialize.
  • SerializeAs
    A data structure that can be serialized into any data format supported by Serde, analogue to Serialize.

Attribute Macros

Derive Macros