Orio

Lightweight and clean alternative to serde, focusing on writing to and from Vec<u8>s.

#[derive(Io)]
struct Thingy {
	#[io(len(u16))]
	name: String,
	kind: ThingyKind,
	#[io(ignore)]
	debug: String
}

#[derive(Io)]
enum ThingyKind {
	Normal,
	Special(#[io(len(u8))] String)
}

let thingy = Thingy {
	name: "thing".to_owned(),
	kind: ThingyKind::Normal,	
	debug: "not written".to_owned()
}
let mut bytes = vec![];
thingy.write(&mut bytes);

Under the hood its a generic wrapper over little-endian byteorder with a derive macro for structs and enums to use.

Named after the cookie :)

License

MIT license

lib.rs:

Orio is a fairly small library that works on top of little-endian byteorder. It's intended to automate the boilerplate of serializing types like packets and still give the user control of the data's representation.

Io trait

The [Io] trait allows types to be written and read generically to byte vecs. See its documentation for usage and manual implementation.

Derive macro

The derive macro #[derive(Io)] can be used to trivially implement Io for your types. All serialized fields must implement the Io trait for it to work. Fields can have the #[io(ignore)] attribute added which will:

1. Ignore the field when writing the full struct/enum.
2. Use Default for reading as there is nothing to read from. Some types like String or Vec have a length field which can be changed. To use these, add the #[io(len(TYPE))] attribute, where TYPE is an int like u8, u16, etc. This lets you customize how much data you want a field to support, e.g. for a filename 255 bytes might be fine but you'd want u64 for the file contents.

Std types

Currently a few types from std are supported:

• All numbers
• String
• Box HashMap Option and Vec of types that implement Io
• Duration and SystemTime. These are both stored as milliseconds. Duration uses #[io(len)] to change the lengths of times you want to support. Since u16 is a little over a minute, you'l usually want u32 or u64.