cs_serde_bytes

Disclaimer

This crate is fork of serde_bytes. The only differrence from the upstream is intentional no support for strings as bytes, making it more strict.

[dependencies]
cs_serde_bytes = "0.12.1"

Explanation

Without specialization, Rust forces Serde to treat &[u8] just like any other slice and Vec<u8> just like any other vector. In reality this particular slice and vector can often be serialized and deserialized in a more efficient, compact representation in many formats.

When working with such a format, you can opt into specialized handling of &[u8] by wrapping it in serde_bytes::Bytes and Vec<u8> by wrapping it in serde_bytes::ByteBuf.

Additionally this crate supports the Serde with attribute to enable efficient handling of &[u8] and Vec<u8> in structs without needing a wrapper type.

Example

use serde::{Deserialize, Serialize};

#[derive(Deserialize, Serialize)]
struct Efficient<'a> {
    #[serde(with = "serde_bytes")]
    bytes: &'a [u8],

    #[serde(with = "serde_bytes")]
    byte_buf: Vec<u8>,
}

License