binbuf

binbuf (short for binary buffers) is a small library to work with binary (network) data in Rust. Just add binbuf::prelude::* to your imports. This imports the most important parts of the library.

Reading from Reader

Reading basic types

The library provides multiple methods to read basic data types like u8, u16, u32, u64, u128, usize, Ipv4Addr, and Ipv6Addr in big and little-endian byte order.

let b = vec![69, 88, 65, 77, 80, 76, 69, 33];
let mut b = Reader::new(b.as_slice());

match u16::read::<BigEndian>(&mut b) {
    Ok(n) => assert_eq!(n, 17752),
    Err(err) => panic!("{}", err),
}

Reading structs and enums

To read custom data structs or enums, we can use the derive macro #[derive(Read)] to annotate the structs.

#[derive(Read)]
struct Data {
    inner: u16,
}

let b = vec![69, 88, 65, 77, 80, 76, 69, 33];
let mut buf = Reader::new(b.as_slice());

match Data::read::<BigEndian>(&mut buf) {
    Ok(data) => assert_eq!(data.inner, 17752),
    Err(err) => panic!("{}", err)
}

Customize the derive macro by annotating the struct with additional attributes: #[binbuf()]. Currently, the following container attributes are supported:

• #[binbuf(error = "...")]

  Default value: binbuf::error::BufferError

  Provide a custom error. The error has to implement these traits:

  • std::fmt::Display
  • std::error::Error
  • From<BufferError>

• #[binbuf(endianness = "...")]

  Default value: both

  Specify the supported endianness for the ReadableVerify trait. Possible values are:

  • little
  • both
  • big

Enums can be tagged with one additional attribute:

• #[binbuf(repr = "...")]

  Default value: u8

The library works well with the thiserror crate. Implementing custom errors with the Error derive macro is straightforward:

use thiserror::Error;

#[derive(Error)]
enum CustomError {
    #[error("Invalid data")]
    Invalid,

    #[error("Buffer error: {0}")]
    BufferError(#[from] BufferError)
}