Struct-To-Bytes

Implementation of struct to bytes conversion and vice versa using serde framework

Notes

Before using, make sure to add serde in your Cargo.toml

[dependencies]
serde = { version = "1.0", features = ["derive"] }

Struct To Bytes Conversion

#[derive(Serialize, Deserialize)]
struct Employee {
    name: String,
}

#[derive(Serialize, Deserialize)]
struct Company {
    name: String,
    employees: Vec<Employee>,
}

let company = Company {
    name: String::from("Walter White Company"),
    employees: vec![Employee {
        name: String::from("Jesse Pinkman"),
    }],
};

let bytes = ser::to_bytes(&company).unwrap();

Bytes To Struct Conversion

#[derive(Serialize, Deserialize)]
struct Employee {
    name: String,
}

#[derive(Serialize, Deserialize)]
struct Company {
    name: String,
    employees: Vec<Employee>,
}

// Suppose you have a chunk of bytes here
let company: Company = de::from_bytes(&bytes).unwrap();

Format

The produced output will be in a packed struct format. For strings or sequences, there will be 2 bytes of padding indicating their size or length. However, you can customize your own padding format by using FormatOptions.

pub struct FormatOptions {
    pub short_length: bool,
    pub short_variant_index: bool,
}

short_length:

• If true, strings or sequences size padding will be in 2 bytes
• If false, strings or sequences size padding will be in 4 bytes

short_variant_index:

• If true, enum index padding will be in 2 bytes
• If false, enum index padding will be in 4 bytes

Note that you need to call se::to_bytes_with_options / de::from_bytes_with_options instead of se::to_bytes / de::from_bytes

Developers

• kevz