Serde JSON

Serde is a framework for serializing and deserializing Rust data structures efficiently and generically.
[]
= "0.9"
You may be looking for:
- JSON API documentation
- Serde API documentation
- Detailed documentation about Serde
- Setting up
#[derive(Serialize, Deserialize)]
- Release notes
JSON is a ubiquitous open-standard format that uses human-readable text to transmit data objects consisting of key-value pairs.
There are three common ways that you might find yourself needing to work with JSON data in Rust.
- As text data. An unprocessed string of JSON data that you receive on an HTTP endpoint, read from a file, or prepare to send to a remote server.
- As an untyped or loosely typed representation. Maybe you want to check that some JSON data is valid before passing it on, but without knowing the structure of what it contains. Or you want to do very basic manipulations like insert a key in a particular spot.
- As a strongly typed Rust data structure. When you expect all or most of your data to conform to a particular structure and want to get real work done without JSON's loosey-goosey nature tripping you up.
Serde JSON provides efficient, flexible, safe ways of converting data between each of these representations.
Operating on untyped JSON values
Any valid JSON data can be manipulated in the following recursive enum
representation. This data structure is serde_json::Value
.
A string of JSON data can be parsed into a serde_json::Value
by the
serde_json::from_str
function. There is also
from_slice
for parsing from a byte slice &[u8] and
from_reader
for parsing from any io::Read
like a File or
a TCP stream.
extern crate serde_json;
use ;
The Value
representation is sufficient for very basic tasks but can be tedious
to work with for anything more significant. Error handling is verbose to
implement correctly, for example imagine trying to detect the presence of
unrecognized fields in the input data. The compiler is powerless to help you
when you make a mistake, for example imagine typoing v["name"]
as v["nmae"]
in one of the dozens of places it is used in your code.
Parsing JSON as strongly typed data structures
Serde provides a powerful way of mapping JSON data into Rust data structures largely automatically.
extern crate serde;
extern crate serde_json;
extern crate serde_derive;
use Error;
This is the same serde_json::from_str
function as before, but this time we
assign the return value to a variable of type Person
so Serde will
automatically interpret the input data as a Person
and produce informative
error messages if the layout does not conform to what a Person
is expected
to look like.
Any type that implements Serde's Deserialize
trait can be deserialized
this way. This includes built-in Rust standard library types like Vec<T>
and HashMap<K, V>
, as well as any structs or enums annotated with
#[derive(Deserialize)]
.
Once we have p
of type Person
, our IDE and the Rust compiler can help us
use it correctly like they do for any other Rust code. The IDE can
autocomplete field names to prevent typos, which was impossible in the
serde_json::Value
representation. And the Rust compiler can check that
when we write p.phones[0]
, then p.phones
is guaranteed to be a
Vec<String>
so indexing into it makes sense and produces a String
.
Constructing JSON values
Serde JSON provides a json!
macro to build serde_json::Value
objects with very natural JSON syntax. In order to use this macro,
serde_json
needs to be imported with the #[macro_use]
attribute.
extern crate serde_json;
The Value::to_string()
function converts a serde_json::Value
into a
String
of JSON text.
One neat thing about the json!
macro is that variables and expressions can
be interpolated directly into the JSON value as you are building it. Serde
will check at compile time that the value you are interpolating is able to
be represented as JSON.
let full_name = "John Doe";
let age_last_year = 42;
// The type of `john` is `serde_json::Value`
let john = json!;
This is amazingly convenient but we have the problem we had before with
Value
which is that the IDE and Rust compiler cannot help us if we get it
wrong. Serde JSON provides a better way of serializing strongly-typed data
structures into JSON text.
Creating JSON by serializing data structures
A data structure can be converted to a JSON string by
serde_json::to_string
. There is also
serde_json::to_vec
which serializes to a Vec<u8>
and
serde_json::to_writer
which serializes to any io::Write
such as a File or a TCP stream.
extern crate serde;
extern crate serde_json;
extern crate serde_derive;
use Error;
Any type that implements Serde's Serialize
trait can be serialized this
way. This includes built-in Rust standard library types like Vec<T>
and
HashMap<K, V>
, as well as any structs or enums annotated with
#[derive(Serialize)]
.
Getting help
Serde developers live in the #serde channel on
irc.mozilla.org
. The #rust channel is also a
good resource with generally faster response time but less specific knowledge
about Serde. If IRC is not your thing, we are happy to respond to GitHub
issues as well.
License
Serde JSON 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 JSON by you, as defined in the Apache-2.0 license, shall be dual licensed as above, without any additional terms or conditions.