How to transform fields during serialization using Serde?

Question

How can I apply a transformation to a field before serialization?

For example, how can I ensure that the fields lat and lon in this struct definition are rounded to at most 6 decimal places before being serialized?

#[derive(Debug, Serialize)]
struct NodeLocation {
    #[serde(rename = "nodeId")]
    id: u32,
    lat: f32,
    lon: f32,
}

Answer 1

The serialize_with attribute

You can use the serialize_with attribute to provide a custom serialization function for your field:

use serde::{Serialize, Serializer}; // 1.0.104

fn round_serialize<S>(x: &f32, s: S) -> Result<S::Ok, S::Error>
where
    S: Serializer,
{
    s.serialize_f32(x.round())
}

#[derive(Debug, Serialize)]
pub struct NodeLocation {
    #[serde(rename = "nodeId")]
    id: u32,
    #[serde(serialize_with = "round_serialize")]
    lat: f32,
    #[serde(serialize_with = "round_serialize")]
    lon: f32,
}

(I've rounded to the nearest integer to avoid the topic "what is best way to round a float to k decimal places").

Implement serde::Serialize

The other semi-manual approach is to create a separate struct with auto-derived serialization, and implement your serialization using that:

use serde::{Serialize, Serializer}; // 1.0.104

#[derive(Debug)]
pub struct NodeLocation {
    id: u32,
    lat: f32,
    lon: f32,
}

impl serde::Serialize for NodeLocation {
    fn serialize<S>(&self, s: S) -> Result<S::Ok, S::Error>
    where
        S: Serializer,
    {
        // Implement your preprocessing in `from`.
        RoundedNodeLocation::from(self).serialize(s)
    }
}

#[derive(Debug, Serialize)]
pub struct RoundedNodeLocation {
    #[serde(rename = "nodeId")]
    id: u32,
    lat: f32,
    lon: f32,
}

impl<'a> From<&'a NodeLocation> for RoundedNodeLocation {
    fn from(other: &'a NodeLocation) -> Self {
        Self {
            id: other.id,
            lat: other.lat.round(),
            lon: other.lon.round(),
        }
    }
}

Notably, this allows you to also add or remove fields as the "inner" serialized type can do basically whatever it wants.