Hex encoding helper for serde

Documentation:

hex-buffer-serde is a helper crate allowing to serialize types, which logically correspond to a byte buffer, in hex encoding within serde.

Usage

Add this to your Crate.toml:

[dependencies]
hex-buffer-serde = "0.4.0"

Basic usage:

use hex_buffer_serde::{Hex as _, HexForm};
use serde_derive::{Deserialize, Serialize};

#[derive(Serialize, Deserialize)]
pub struct Example {
    // will be serialized as hex string in human-readable formats
    // (e.g., JSON or TOML), and as a byte array in binary formats
    // (e.g., bincode).
    #[serde(with = "HexForm")]
    buffer: [u8; 32],
    // other fields...
}

See crate docs for more examples of usage.

Alternatives

hex-serde provides similar functionality and is a viable alternative if you have the control over the type that needs hex-encoding. This crate differs from hex-serde in the following ways:

• You don't need control over the (de)serialized type; it does not need to implement any specific "useful" traits (such as AsRef<[u8]>).
• Hex encoding is used only with human-readable (de)serializers (e.g., JSON or TOML). If the (de)serializer is not human-readable (e.g., bincode), the type is serialized as a byte array.

serde-with also provides hex encoding / decoding functionality with similar constraints to hex-serde.

License

hex-buffer-serde is licensed under the Apache License (Version 2.0). See LICENSE for details.