v0.1.0

io_serializable v0.1.0

Overview

io_serializable is a Crystal library that provides binary serialization and deserialization for Crystal objects. This library extends the IO class to allow objects to be written to and read from binary streams.

Features

Core Functionality

• Binary serialization and deserialization of Crystal objects
• Support for both big-endian and little-endian byte formats
• Automatic handling of nilable types
• Support for nested serializable objects

Supported Types

• Primitive types:
  • Integers: Int8, Int16, Int32, Int64, UInt8, UInt16, UInt32, UInt64
  • Floating point: Float32, Float64
  • Bool
  • Char (including Unicode characters)
  • String
• Nilable versions of all primitive types
• Enums
• Nested objects that include IO::Serializable

Field Annotations

• @[IO::Field(skip: true)] - Exclude specific fields from serialization
  • Useful for sensitive data (e.g., passwords)
  • Runtime-only fields
  • Temporary data

Requirements

• Crystal >= 1.15.1

Installation

Add the dependency to your shard.yml:

dependencies:
  io_serializable:
    github: dsennerlov/io_serializable

Usage

require "io_serializable"

class Person
  include IO::Serializable
  
  property name : String
  property age : Int32
  
  def initialize(@name = "", @age = 0)
  end
end

# Serialize
person = Person.new(name: "Alice", age: 30)
io = IO::Memory.new
person.to_io(io)

# Deserialize
io.rewind
restored_person = Person.from_io(io)

Known Limitations

• Symbol type is not supported for serialization
• Arrays are not yet supported (planned for future releases)

Future Plans

• Add support for Arrays
• Add annotation for ByteFormat
• Additional type support and optimizations

License

MIT License

Author

David Sennerlöv david@sennerlov.se

This release provides a solid foundation for binary serialization in Crystal, with support for all major primitive types and a clean, intuitive API. The library is production-ready for use cases that don't require array serialization or symbol support.