serde_bytes

Wrapper types to enable optimized handling of &[u8] and Vec<u8>.

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.

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

```rust

[macro_use]

extern crate serde_derive;

extern crate serde; extern crate serde_bytes;

[derive(Serialize)]

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

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

}

[derive(Serialize, Deserialize)]

struct Packet { #[serde(with = "serde_bytes")] payload: Vec, } ```

Rust support for specialization is being tracked in [rust-lang/rust#31844]. Once it lands in the stable compiler Serde will be deprecating these wrapper types in favor of optimizing &[u8] and Vec<u8> out of the box.

License

Serde is licensed under either of

• Apache License, Version 2.0, (LICENSE-APACHE or http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0)
• MIT license (LICENSE-MIT or http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT)

at your option.

Contribution

Unless you explicitly state otherwise, any contribution intentionally submitted for inclusion in Serde by you, as defined in the Apache-2.0 license, shall be dual licensed as above, without any additional terms or conditions.