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jsonrustjson-deserializationserde

Rust & Serde JSON deserialization examples?


I'm trying to figure out how to deserialize JSON into a structure using Serde. For instance, the example JSON on serde_json's own documentation contains the following data:

{
    "FirstName": "John",
    "LastName": "Doe",
    "Age": 43,
    "Address": {
        "Street": "Downing Street 10",
        "City": "London",
        "Country": "Great Britain"
    },
    "PhoneNumbers": [
        "+44 1234567",
        "+44 2345678"
    ]
}

Now, if we assume that the above data is in a variable "input" and the following piece of code:

let deserialized_data: Data = serde_json::from_str(input).unwrap();

... what should struct Data look like?


Solution

  • Most of the standard data structures are serializable, so the following structures should work:

    #[derive(Serialize, Deserialize)]
    struct Data {
        FirstName: String,
        LastName: String,
        Age: u32,
        Address: Address,
        PhoneNumbers: Vec<String>
    }
    
    #[derive(Serialize, Deserialize)]
    struct Address {
        Street: String,
        City: String,
        Country: String
    }
    

    If some of the fields in input may be absent, then the corresponding structure fields should be Option<T> instead of just T.

    Note that it is possible to name fields in a more "Rusty" manner, i.e. snake_case, because serde supports renaming annotations:

    #[derive(Serialize, Deserialize)]
    struct Address {
        #[serde(rename="Street")]
        street: String,
        #[serde(rename="City")]
        city: String,
        #[serde(rename="Country")]
        country: String
    }
    

    This issue is also relevant to fields renaming.