serde 0.8.0

on Rust Cargo

This release contains significant breaking changes compared to v0.7.x.

Traits

• The Serializer trait has been modified to allow for streaming serialization - serializing seq and map elements before knowing what the end of the seq or map will be. (#437)

• Reduced boilerplate (no more SeqVisitor and MapVisitor) when implementing Serialize for most types.

  // OLD API
  struct MySeqVisitor { /* ... */ }
  impl /* pages of boilerplate */
  try!(serializer.serialize_seq(MySeqVisitor::new(iter, len)));
  
  // NEW API
  let mut state = try!(serializer.serialize_seq(len));
  for e in iter {
      try!(serializer.serialize_seq_elt(&mut state, e));
  }
  try!(serializer.serialize_seq_end(state));

• The Serializer and Deserializer traits no longer provide default implementations for any methods. The old defaults were JSON-centric and inappropriate for most other formats. Every Serializer and Deserializer should mindfully implement all of the methods. (#437, #452)

Codegen

• No more public dependency on Syntex. The serde_codegen::register function which was deprecated in v0.7.9 has been removed. Users should use serde_codegen::expand. See the readme for sample code, and see this forum topic for exposition. (#445)
• Adjusted heuristic for generating bounds on generic type parameters (#456). This fixes a number of issues relating to bounds on recursive types, bounds involving references, and bounds involving private types (#435, #436, #441, #443)

Impls

• The Deserialize impl for PhantomData<T> has been expanded to all T, not just T: Deserialize (#457, #459)
• Add Deserialize impl for Box<str> (#454)

Nightly

• The nightly feature has been renamed to unstable to align with community practices. (#404)