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title Rust Object Serialization
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license Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file distributed with this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership. The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0 Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.

Apache Fory™ is a high-performance multi-language serialization framework. The Rust implementation uses compile-time code generation for object serialization.

The Rust implementation provides versatile and high-performance serialization with automatic memory management and compile-time type safety. It supports both xlang mode for cross-language payloads and native mode for Rust-only payloads.

Why Apache Fory™ Rust?

  • Fast binary encoding: Zero-copy deserialization and optimized binary protocols
  • Xlang: Seamlessly serialize/deserialize data across Java, Python, C++, Go, Rust, JavaScript/TypeScript, C#, Swift, Dart, Scala, and Kotlin
  • Type-safe: Compile-time type checking with derive macros
  • Circular references: Automatic tracking of shared and circular references with Rc/Arc and weak pointers
  • Polymorphic: Serialize trait objects with Box<dyn Trait>, Rc<dyn Trait>, and Arc<dyn Trait>
  • Schema evolution: Compatible mode for independent schema changes

Crates

Crate Description Version
fory User-facing API, public Fory types, and derive macros 1.5.0
fory-core Lower-level core crate for advanced integrations 1.5.0
fory-derive Procedural macro crate for direct derive-macro use 1.5.0

Most applications should depend on fory only. It re-exports the derive macros and the public Fory types needed by generated code. Use fory-core or fory-derive directly only when intentionally building on the lower-level crates.

Quick Start

Add Apache Fory™ to your Cargo.toml:

[dependencies]
fory = "1.5.0"

Basic Example

use fory::{Fory, Error, Reader};
use fory::ForyStruct;

#[derive(ForyStruct, Debug, PartialEq)]
struct User {
    name: String,
    age: i32,
    email: String,
}

fn main() -> Result<(), Error> {
    let mut fory = Fory::builder().xlang(true).build();
    fory.register::<User>(1)?;

    let user = User {
        name: "Alice".to_string(),
        age: 30,
        email: "alice@example.com".to_string(),
    };

    // Serialize
    let bytes = fory.serialize(&user)?;
    // Deserialize
    let decoded: User = fory.deserialize(&bytes)?;
    assert_eq!(user, decoded);

    // Serialize to specified buffer
    let mut buf: Vec<u8> = vec![];
    fory.serialize_to(&mut buf, &user)?;
    // Deserialize from specified buffer
    let mut reader = Reader::new(&buf);
    let decoded: User = fory.deserialize_from(&mut reader)?;
    assert_eq!(user, decoded);
    Ok(())
}

Xlang Mode And Native Mode

Use xlang mode for cross-language payloads and schemas shared with other Fory implementations. Xlang mode is the default Rust wire mode, and Rust examples that use it set .xlang(true) explicitly so the mode choice is visible.

Use native mode for Rust-only traffic. Native mode is selected with .xlang(false) and keeps Rust object serialization in Rust-native form. It supports native-only concrete targets and data-enum shapes that have no xlang representation. Dynamic Any, application trait, and shared-reference carriers can also be used in xlang mode when every selected concrete target is xlang-compatible. Compatible mode is enabled by default. Set .compatible(false) only when every reader and writer uses the same Rust schema and you want faster serialization and smaller size.

See Cross-Language Interoperability for Rust xlang registration and interoperability rules, and Native Serialization for Rust-only payloads.

Thread Safety

Apache Fory™ Rust is fully thread-safe: Fory implements both Send and Sync, so one configured instance can be shared across threads for concurrent work. The internal read/write context pools are lazily initialized with thread-safe primitives, letting worker threads reuse buffers without coordination.

use fory::{Fory, Error};
use fory::ForyStruct;
use std::sync::Arc;
use std::thread;

#[derive(ForyStruct, Clone, Copy, Debug, PartialEq)]
struct Item {
    value: i32,
}

fn main() -> Result<(), Error> {
    let mut fory = Fory::builder().xlang(true).build();
    fory.register::<Item>(1000)?;

    let fory = Arc::new(fory);
    let handles: Vec<_> = (0..8)
        .map(|i| {
            let shared = Arc::clone(&fory);
            thread::spawn(move || {
                let item = Item { value: i };
                shared.serialize(&item)
            })
        })
        .collect();

    for handle in handles {
        let bytes = handle.join().unwrap()?;
        let item: Item = fory.deserialize(&bytes)?;
        assert!(item.value >= 0);
    }

    Ok(())
}

Tip: Perform registrations (such as fory.register::<T>(id)) before spawning threads so every worker sees the same metadata. Once configured, wrapping the instance in Arc is enough to fan out serialization and deserialization tasks safely.

Use Cases

Object Serialization

  • Complex data structures with nested objects and references
  • Cross-language communication in microservices
  • General-purpose serialization with full type safety
  • Schema evolution with compatible mode
  • Graph-like data structures with circular references

Next Steps

Before decoding bytes from outside the application trust boundary, read Rust Security.