dbc-rs

A lightweight Rust library for seamlessly parsing and editing DBC (CAN Database) files, with robust support for encoding and decoding messages and signals.

Features

• Zero dependencies - Pure Rust, no external runtime dependencies
• no_std compatible - Works on embedded targets (Cortex-M, RISC-V)
• Flexible memory - Heap (alloc) or stack (heapless) allocation
• Memory safe - forbid(unsafe_code) enforced
• Full read/write - Parse, modify, and serialize DBC files

Quick Start

[dependencies]
dbc-rs = "0.4"

Decode CAN Frames

use dbc_rs::Dbc;

// Parse DBC content
let dbc = Dbc::parse(dbc_content)?;

// Decode a CAN frame (ID 0x100, 8 bytes, standard 11-bit ID)
let signals = dbc.decode(0x100, &frame_data, false)?;
for signal in signals {
    println!("{}: {:.2} {}", signal.name, signal.value, signal.unit);
}

Encode Signal Values

use dbc_rs::Dbc;

let dbc = Dbc::parse(dbc_content)?;

// Encode signal values into a CAN frame payload (standard 11-bit ID)
let payload = dbc.encode(0x100, &[
    ("RPM", 2500.0),
    ("Temperature", 85.0),
], false)?;

Embedded (no_std)

[dependencies]
dbc-rs = { version = "0.4", default-features = false, features = ["heapless"] }

See examples/ for complete working examples:

• decode.rs - Signal decoding basics
• decode_frame.rs - Using embedded-can Frame trait
• encode.rs - Encoding signals to CAN payloads
• create_dbc.rs - Building DBC files programmatically
• parse_std.rs / parse_no_std.rs - Parsing in different environments

Feature Flags

Documentation

• API Reference
• ARCHITECTURE.md - Internal design
• SPECIFICATIONS.md - DBC format reference
• SECURITY.md - Security audit

License

MIT OR Apache-2.0. See LICENSING.md.