Crate 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.

use serde::{Serialize, Deserialize};

#[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<u8>,
}

Structs

• ByteBuf
  Wrapper around Vec<u8> to serialize and deserialize efficiently.
• Bytes
  Wrapper around &[u8] to serialize and deserialize efficiently.

Functions

• deserialize
  Serde deserialize_with function to deserialize bytes efficiently.
• serialize
  Serde serialize_with function to serialize bytes efficiently.