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What is Serde?

Serde (short for "serialize" and "deserialize") is a framework for serializing and deserializing Rust data structures efficiently and generically. Unlike .NET's built-in JSON serialization, Serde is not specific to any particular data format - it's designed to be format-agnostic.

In Rust, you'll typically use two crates together:

  • serde: The core serialization/deserialization framework
  • serde_json: The JSON-specific implementation of serde

Adding Serde to Your Project​

First, you need to add the required dependencies to your Cargo.toml file:

[dependencies]
serde = { version = "1.0", features = ["derive"] }
serde_json = "1.0"

The derive feature is particularly important as it allows you to use procedural macros to automatically implement serialization for your types.

What's a procedural macro you ask? Or even more fundamentally, what's a macro?