std/marshal

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This module contains procs for serialization and deserialization of arbitrary Nim data structures. The serialization format uses JSON.

Restriction: For objects, their type is not serialized. This means essentially that it does not work if the object has some other runtime type than its compiletime type.

Basic usage

Example:

import std/marshal
type
  A = object of RootObj
  B = object of A
    f: int

let a: ref A = new(B)
assert $$a[] == "{}" # not "{f: 0}"

# unmarshal
let c = to[B]("""{"f": 2}""")
assert typeof(c) is B
assert c.f == 2

# marshal
assert $$c == """{"f": 2}"""

Note: The to and $$ operations are available at compile-time!

See also

• streams module
• json module

Imports

streams, typeinfo, json, intsets, tables, unicode

Procs

proc `$$`[T](x: sink T): string

Returns a string representation of x (serialization, marshalling).

Note: to serialize x to JSON use %x from the json module or jsonutils.toJson(x).

Example:

type
  Foo = object
    id: int
    bar: string
let x = Foo(id: 1, bar: "baz")
## serialize:
let y = $$x
assert y == """{"id": 1, "bar": "baz"}"""

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proc load[T](s: Stream; data: var T)

Loads data from the stream s. Raises IOError in case of an error.

Example:

import std/streams

var s = newStringStream("[1, 3, 5]")
var a: array[3, int]
load(s, a)
assert a == [1, 3, 5]

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proc store[T](s: Stream; data: sink T)

Stores data into the stream s. Raises IOError in case of an error.

Example:

import std/streams

var s = newStringStream("")
var a = [1, 3, 5]
store(s, a)
s.setPosition(0)
assert s.readAll() == "[1, 3, 5]"

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proc to[T](data: string): T

Reads data and transforms it to a type T (deserialization, unmarshalling).

Example:

type
  Foo = object
    id: int
    bar: string
let y = """{"id": 1, "bar": "baz"}"""
assert typeof(y) is string
## deserialize to type 'Foo':
let z = y.to[:Foo]
assert typeof(z) is Foo
assert z.id == 1
assert z.bar == "baz"

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