How to Use Custom Serializers and Deserializers in Serde

Crates/Serde
2026-04-17T12:05:42+00:00
Implement custom Serde serializers and deserializers by deriving traits on your structs or manually implementing them for full control over data conversion.

You implement custom serialization and deserialization by defining a struct that implements the Serialize and Deserialize traits, then using a Deserializer like serde_json to process data. For most cases, use the #[derive(Serialize, Deserialize)] macro to generate the implementation automatically.

use serde::{Serialize, Deserialize};

#[derive(Serialize, Deserialize)]
struct User {
    id: u32,
    name: String,
}

fn main() {
    let user = User { id: 1, name: "Alice".to_string() };
    let json = serde_json::to_string(&user).unwrap();
    let parsed: User = serde_json::from_str(&json).unwrap();
}