Overview

Serde-dn is a .NET port of the popular serde.rs Rust serialization/deserialization library.

Design

Unlike many other serialization libraries, serde-dn is multi-format, high performance, source-generated, and fully compatible with app trimming and Native AOT.

Most other .NET serialization libraries rely on run-time reflection to serialize types. Serde-dn instead uses two interfaces, ISerialize, and IDeserialize to allow each type to control how it is serialized. Serde-dn uses source generation to implement these interfaces, so you almost never need to implement them manually. Source generation and interfaces avoids all run-time reflection and its overhead, and provides type safety by ensuring all requested types support serialization.

Formats

Serde-dn is a multi-format serialization library, with built-in support for JSON.

Serde-dn is multi-format because it separates how a type serializes itself from the knowledge of the data format. Rather than have individual interfaces for each format, serde-dn uses ISerialize and IDeserialize for all formats. Adding support for new formats comes from implementing two different interfaces: ISerializer and IDeserializer. Since each interface pair is separate, new data format support can be added via NuGet packages.

Getting started

This full sample is also available in the Github repo.

Start by adding the serde NuGet package:

dotnet add package serde

You can now use the [GenerateSerialize] and [GenerateDeserialize] attributes to automatically implement serialization and deserialization for your own types. Don't forget to mark them partial!

using Serde;
using Serde.Json;

string output = JsonSerializer.Serialize(new SampleClass());

// prints: {"X":3,"Y":"sample"}
Console.WriteLine(output);

var deserialized = JsonSerializer.Deserialize<SampleClass>(output);

// prints SampleClass { X = 3, Y = sample }
Console.WriteLine(deserialized);

[GenerateSerialize, GenerateDeserialize]
partial record SampleClass
{
    // automatically includes public properties and fields
    public int X { get; init; } = 3;
    public string Y = "sample";
}