Using derive

Serde provides a derive macro to generate implementations of the Serialize and Deserialize traits for data structures defined in your crate, allowing them to be represented conveniently in all of Serde's data formats.

You only need to set this up if your code is using #[derive(Serialize, Deserialize)].

This functionality is based on Rust's #[derive] mechanism, just like what you would use to automatically derive implementations of the built-in Clone, Copy, Debug, or other traits. It is able to generate implementations for most structs and enums including ones with elaborate generic types or trait bounds. On rare occasions, for an especially convoluted type you may need to implement the traits manually.

These derives require a Rust compiler version 1.31 or newer.

Add serde = { version = "1.0", features = ["derive"] } as a dependency in Cargo.toml.
Ensure that all other Serde-based dependencies (for example serde_json) are on a version that is compatible with serde 1.0.
On structs and enums that you want to serialize, import the derive macro as use serde::Serialize; within the same module and write #[derive(Serialize)] on the struct or enum.
Similarly import use serde::Deserialize; and write #[derive(Deserialize)] on structs and enums that you want to deserialize.

Here is the Cargo.toml:

Cargo.toml

[package]
name = "my-crate"
version = "0.1.0"
authors = ["Me <user@rust-lang.org>"]

[dependencies]
serde = { version = "1.0", features = ["derive"] }

# serde_json is just for the example, not required in general
serde_json = "1.0"

Now the src/main.rs which uses Serde's custom derives:

src/main.rs

use serde::{Serialize, Deserialize};

#[derive(Serialize, Deserialize, Debug)]
struct Point {
    x: i32,
    y: i32,
}

fn main() {
    let point = Point { x: 1, y: 2 };

    let serialized = serde_json::to_string(&point).unwrap();
    println!("serialized = {}", serialized);

    let deserialized: Point = serde_json::from_str(&serialized).unwrap();
    println!("deserialized = {:?}", deserialized);
}

Here is the output:

$ cargo run
serialized = {"x":1,"y":2}
deserialized = Point { x: 1, y: 2 }

Troubleshooting

Sometimes you may see compile-time errors that tell you:

the trait `serde::ser::Serialize` is not implemented for `...`

even though the struct or enum clearly has #[derive(Serialize)] on it.

This almost always means that you are using libraries that depend on incompatible versions of Serde. You may be depending on serde 1.0 in your Cargo.toml but using some other library that depends on serde 0.9. So the Serialize trait from serde 1.0 may be implemented, but the library expects an implementation of the Serialize trait from serde 0.9. From the Rust compiler's perspective these are totally different traits.

The fix is to upgrade or downgrade libraries as appropriate until the Serde versions match. The cargo tree -d command is helpful for finding all the places that duplicate dependencies are being pulled in.