serde

Serde is a Rust framework for serializing and deserializing data structures. It provides a generic, efficient way to convert Rust data to and from various data formats, enabling the same types to be used across different interchanges such as JSON, YAML, TOML, CBOR, MessagePack, and more. The design separates the data model from the wire format, allowing formats to be swapped with no changes to the core data definitions.

The core of Serde consists of two traits: Serialize and Deserialize. Types implement these traits to enable conversion to and from data formats. Implementations can be written manually or generated automatically through derive macros (#[derive(Serialize, Deserialize)]) provided by the serde_derive crate, commonly used via feature flags. The actual format-specific serialization and deserialization are carried out by separate crates (for example, serde_json, serde_yaml, serde_toml, serde_cbor, serde_bincode) that implement the Serializer and Deserializer traits for their respective formats.

Customization and flexibility are supported through a variety of attributes on struct and enum fields. These include renaming fields, skipping values, providing defaults, using with to customize serialization logic for particular fields, and flatten to merge nested structures. Serde relies on compile-time code generation and a Visitor-based deserialization approach, avoiding runtime reflection.

Serde is widely used in the Rust ecosystem for configuration, data exchange in APIs, and persistence. It is an open-source project available on crates.io and hosted on GitHub, with dual licensing under MIT and Apache-2.0.