freeform

Freeform is a small library for being able to store free-form typed ser/de data, sort of like a specialized HashMap<String, Box<dyn Any>> for data types that are commonly serialized/deserialized.

Current implementation

The main dish of this crate is the Freeform type. You can store and retrieve values using Key<T>'s from the typed_key crate, so long as T implements FreeformData (Which is automatically implemented when types implement Sync + Send + 'static + DeserializeOwned + Serialize). These trait bounds should be easy enough for objects that are primarily for storing data.

The data is stored in the Sord (Serialized OR Deserialized) type, which keeps a cached value of the type as either the serialized string, the deserialized value, or both, and uses OnceLocks to only generate the se/de alternate type when requested.

Freeform and Sord both have a SerdeScheme type parameter to determine how stored values are serialized/deserialized, but Freeform uses Json (serde_json) by default. This crate also provides Toml and Ron implementations.

Freeform is implemented to look naturally when serialized with the corresponding scheme. If serialized with a different scheme, no behavior is guaranteed, so Freeform also provides helper methods to serialize/deserialize itself using the same scheme it uses for its values

    let freeform: Freeform<Ron> = ... ;
    serde_json::to_string(freeform) // What would this look like? Use freeform.serialize() instead

Future plans

In the future, there are a number of optimizations I would like to implement.

• FreeformData: 'static to FreeformData<'a>
• Svord<S: SerdeScheme> (Stores S::Value as well)