nbt_rust

A Rust library for serializing and deserializing the NBT (Named Binary Tag) file format used by Minecraft.

NBT format documentation

Serialization

Check out the examples or simply run

• cargo run --example from_file
• cargo run --example serialize
• cargo run --example deserialize

This library allows you to write a single u8, or String, or any other supported type.

use nbt_rust::ser::Serializer;

let writer = /* impl std::io::Write */;
let mut ser = Serializer::new(writer);
ser.serialize("my_int", 1)?; // or ser.serialize_int("my_int", 1)
ser.serialize("my_byte", 12u8)?; // or ser.serialize_byte("my_byte", 12)
ser.serialize("my_short", 123i16)?; // or ser.serialize_short("my_short", 123)
ser.serialize("my_string", "Das ist cool")?; // or ser.serialize_string("my_string", "Das ist cool")

Note: In this example, different data types are serialized consecutively but not within a List or an NBT array, so the Deserializer will only read the first value.

Minecraft typically uses Compound tags in its files, so consider using start_compound immediately.

use nbt_rust::ser::Serializer;

let writer = /* impl std::io::Write */;
let mut compound_ser = Serializer::new(writer).start_compound("my_compound")?;

// Write fields to the Compound tag
compound_ser.write_field("item_1", 213u32)?;
compound_ser.write_field("item_2", &[1u8,2,3,4])?;

// Finish the compound tag and get your writer back (if needed)
compound_ser.end()?; // This will return the owned `Serializer` object

Deserialization

There was no real need to wrap deserialization methods into a struct.

There are two ways to deserialize: from_bytes and from_reader

• from_bytes(&[u8])

use nbt_rust::de::from_bytes;
use nbt_rust::NbtTag;

let bytes = /* Some NBT formatted binary data */;
let (name: String, result: NbtTag) = from_bytes(bytes);
/* Do something with `name` and `result` */

• from_reader(impl std::io::Read)

use nbt_rust::de::from_reader;
use nbt_rust::NbtTag;

let data = /* impl std::io::Read */;
let (name: String, result: NbtTag) = from_reader(bytes);
/* Do something with `name` and `result` */