SERDES LIBRARY

• Author: Richard James Howe
• License: 0BSD / Public Domain
• Email: mailto:hower.r.j.89@gmail.com
• Repo: https://github.com/howerj/serdes

This is a header-only serialization / deserialization library for C (and C++) that allows you to perform SERDES operations on a struct to and from a buffer.

Consult the code, in serdes.h for documentation and how to use this library.

For a quick overview of what the library does and helps with, say you want to write a structure to disk, or send it over a network connection, in a portable way, take the following structure as an example:

struct example {
	uint16_t a;
	int32_t b;
	uint64_t c;
	uint8_t d;
};

It is often a hassle to write the code out; what endianess is used, you have to write at least two functions (and another to print the structure out for debugging), etcetera.

Instead you can use this library and write:

int serdes_example(struct example *data, int op, uint8_t *buffer, size_t length) {
	serdes_t s;
	serdes_start(&s, op, buffer, length, "example");
	serdes_u16(&s, 0, &data->a);
	serdes_i32(&s, 0, &data->b);
	serdes_u64(&s, 0, &data->c);
	serdes_u8(&s, 0, &data->d);
	return serdes_end(s);
}

This function will allow you to serialize the example structure into a buffer, read from a buffer into the example structure, and print the structure out.

It is described in more detail in the header.