How to deserialize a subfield of a struct from the original struct's JSON with Serde?

Question

I want to have the Test::team_size attribute be deserialized from the data of Test object itself:

#[derive(Debug, Serialize, Deseri         


        

Answer 1

As of Serde 1.0.34, you can now use #[serde(flatten)]:

#[derive(Debug, Serialize, Deserialize)]
struct Test {
    pub i: i64,
    #[serde(flatten)]
    pub team_size: TeamSize,
}

---

Before this, the easiest workaround would be to deserialize into a private helper type and restructure it as needed:

#[macro_use]
extern crate serde_derive;

extern crate serde;
extern crate serde_json;

use serde::{Serialize, Serializer, Deserialize, Deserializer};

#[derive(Debug)]
pub struct TeamSize {
    pub min: i64,
    pub max: i64,
}

#[derive(Debug)]
pub struct Test {
    pub i: i64,
    pub team_size: TeamSize,
}

// Private helper
#[derive(Serialize, Deserialize)]
struct Helper {
    pub i: i64,
    pub min: i64,
    pub max: i64,
}

impl Serialize for Test {
    fn serialize(&self, serializer: S) -> Result
        where S: Serializer
    {
        let helper = Helper {
            i: self.i,
            min: self.team_size.min,
            max: self.team_size.max,
        };
        helper.serialize(serializer)
    }
}

impl<'de> Deserialize<'de> for Test {
    fn deserialize(deserializer: D) -> Result
        where D: Deserializer<'de>
    {
        let helper = Helper::deserialize(deserializer)?;
        Ok(Test {
            i: helper.i,
            team_size: TeamSize {
                min: helper.min,
                max: helper.max,
            },
        })
    }
}

fn main() {
    let j = r#" { "i": -2, "min": 2, "max": 5 } "#;

    let de: Test = serde_json::from_str(j).unwrap();
    println!("{:#?}", de);

    let ser = serde_json::to_string_pretty(&de).unwrap();
    println!("{}", ser);
}