Home

Awesome

Parity SCALE Codec

Rust implementation of the SCALE (Simple Concatenated Aggregate Little-Endian) data format for types used in the Parity Substrate framework.

SCALE is a light-weight format which allows encoding (and decoding) which makes it highly suitable for resource-constrained execution environments like blockchain runtimes and low-power, low-memory devices.

It is important to note that the encoding context (knowledge of how the types and data structures look) needs to be known separately at both encoding and decoding ends. The encoded data does not include this contextual information.

To get a better understanding of how the encoding is done for different types, take a look at the "Type encoding (SCALE)" page in Substrate docs.

Implementation

The codec is implemented using the following traits:

Encode

The Encode trait is used for encoding of data into the SCALE format. The Encode trait contains the following functions:

Note: Implementations should override using_encoded for value types and encode_to for allocating types. size_hint should be implemented for all types, wherever possible. Wrapper types should override all methods.

Decode

The Decode trait is used for deserialization/decoding of encoded data into the respective types.

CompactAs

The CompactAs trait is used for wrapping custom types/structs as compact types, which makes them even more space/memory efficient. The compact encoding is described here.

HasCompact

The HasCompact trait, if implemented, tells that the corresponding type is a compact encode-able type.

EncodeLike

The EncodeLike trait needs to be implemented for each type manually. When using derive, it is done automatically for you. Basically the trait gives you the opportunity to accept multiple types to a function that all encode to the same representation.

Usage Examples

Following are some examples to demonstrate usage of the codec.

Simple types

# // Import macros if derive feature is not used.
# #[cfg(not(feature="derive"))]
# use parity_scale_codec_derive::{Encode, Decode};

use parity_scale_codec::{Encode, Decode};

#[derive(Debug, PartialEq, Encode, Decode)]
enum EnumType {
    #[codec(index = 15)]
    A,
    B(u32, u64),
    C {
        a: u32,
        b: u64,
    },
}

let a = EnumType::A;
let b = EnumType::B(1, 2);
let c = EnumType::C { a: 1, b: 2 };

a.using_encoded(|ref slice| {
    assert_eq!(slice, &b"\x0f");
});

b.using_encoded(|ref slice| {
    assert_eq!(slice, &b"\x01\x01\0\0\0\x02\0\0\0\0\0\0\0");
});

c.using_encoded(|ref slice| {
    assert_eq!(slice, &b"\x02\x01\0\0\0\x02\0\0\0\0\0\0\0");
});

let mut da: &[u8] = b"\x0f";
assert_eq!(EnumType::decode(&mut da).ok(), Some(a));

let mut db: &[u8] = b"\x01\x01\0\0\0\x02\0\0\0\0\0\0\0";
assert_eq!(EnumType::decode(&mut db).ok(), Some(b));

let mut dc: &[u8] = b"\x02\x01\0\0\0\x02\0\0\0\0\0\0\0";
assert_eq!(EnumType::decode(&mut dc).ok(), Some(c));

let mut dz: &[u8] = &[0];
assert_eq!(EnumType::decode(&mut dz).ok(), None);

# fn main() { }

Compact type with HasCompact

# // Import macros if derive feature is not used.
# #[cfg(not(feature="derive"))]
# use parity_scale_codec_derive::{Encode, Decode};

use parity_scale_codec::{Encode, Decode, Compact, HasCompact};

#[derive(Debug, PartialEq, Encode, Decode)]
struct Test1CompactHasCompact<T: HasCompact> {
    #[codec(compact)]
    bar: T,
}

#[derive(Debug, PartialEq, Encode, Decode)]
struct Test1HasCompact<T: HasCompact> {
    #[codec(encoded_as = "<T as HasCompact>::Type")]
    bar: T,
}

let test_val: (u64, usize) = (0u64, 1usize);

let encoded = Test1HasCompact { bar: test_val.0 }.encode();
assert_eq!(encoded.len(), test_val.1);
assert_eq!(<Test1CompactHasCompact<u64>>::decode(&mut &encoded[..]).unwrap().bar, test_val.0);

# fn main() { }

Type with CompactAs

# // Import macros if derive feature is not used.
# #[cfg(not(feature="derive"))]
# use parity_scale_codec_derive::{Encode, Decode};

use serde_derive::{Serialize, Deserialize};
use parity_scale_codec::{Encode, Decode, Compact, HasCompact, CompactAs, Error};

#[cfg_attr(feature = "std", derive(Serialize, Deserialize, Debug))]
#[derive(PartialEq, Eq, Clone)]
struct StructHasCompact(u32);

impl CompactAs for StructHasCompact {
    type As = u32;

    fn encode_as(&self) -> &Self::As {
        &12
    }

    fn decode_from(_: Self::As) -> Result<Self, Error> {
        Ok(StructHasCompact(12))
    }
}

impl From<Compact<StructHasCompact>> for StructHasCompact {
    fn from(_: Compact<StructHasCompact>) -> Self {
        StructHasCompact(12)
    }
}

#[derive(Debug, PartialEq, Encode, Decode)]
enum TestGenericHasCompact<T> {
    A {
        #[codec(compact)] a: T
    },
}

let a = TestGenericHasCompact::A::<StructHasCompact> {
    a: StructHasCompact(12325678),
};

let encoded = a.encode();
assert_eq!(encoded.len(), 2);

# fn main() { }

Derive attributes

The derive implementation supports the following attributes:

Known issues

Even though this crate supports deserialization of arbitrarily sized array (e.g. [T; 1024 * 1024 * 1024]) using such types is not recommended and will most likely result in a stack overflow. If you have a big array inside of your structure which you want to decode you should wrap it in a Box, e.g. Box<[T; 1024 * 1024 * 1024]>.

License: Apache-2.0