Enum to deserialize HTML sizes from JSON with serde

Question

I added an enum for my webscraper to deserialize data from a JSON field that represents an HTML image size, which can either be an unsigned int like 1080 or a string like "100%":

use serde::Deserialize;
use std::fmt::{Display, Formatter};
#[derive(Clone, Debug, Eq, PartialEq)]
pub enum HtmlSize {
 String(String),
 Int(u64),
}
impl Display for HtmlSize {
 fn fmt(&self, f: &mut Formatter<'_>) -> std::fmt::Result {
 match self {
 Self::String(string) => write!(f, r#""{}""#, string),
 Self::Int(int) => write!(f, "{}", int),
 }
 }
}
impl<'de> Deserialize<'de> for HtmlSize {
 fn deserialize<D>(deserializer: D) -> Result<Self, D::Error>
 where
 D: serde::Deserializer<'de>,
 {
 deserializer.deserialize_any(HtmlSizeVisitor)
 }
}
struct HtmlSizeVisitor;
impl<'de> serde::de::Visitor<'de> for HtmlSizeVisitor {
 type Value = HtmlSize;
 fn expecting(&self, formatter: &mut Formatter) -> std::fmt::Result {
 write!(
 formatter,
 "an unsigned integer or a string representing a width"
 )
 }
 fn visit_u64<E: serde::de::Error>(self, n: u64) -> Result<HtmlSize, E> {
 Ok(HtmlSize::Int(n))
 }
 fn visit_str<E: serde::de::Error>(self, string: &str) -> Result<HtmlSize, E> {
 Ok(HtmlSize::String(string.to_string()))
 }
}

Example usage:

#[derive(Clone, Debug, Deserialize, Eq, PartialEq)]
pub struct ImageInfo {
 id: String,
 alt: String,
 height: HtmlSize,
 src: String,
 width: HtmlSize,
 caption: String,
 credit: String,
}

I did not find anything readily available like this, so I implemented the above HtmlSize with its corresponding visitor. Is this a sensible implementation or did I reinvent the wheel? Can the implementation be improved?

Answer 1

You don't actually need to implement your own logic, you can use #[serde(untagged):

#[derive(Clone, Debug, Eq, PartialEq, Deserialize)]
#[serde(untagged)]
pub enum HtmlSize {
 String(String),
 Int(u64),
}

#[serde(untagged)] will deserialize into which enum variant matches the incoming data.

Answer 2

I don't have enough experience with rust in particular to usefully comment on the implementation itself

Still, there's one part of the design that I do think I can talk about - I expect that an image with width: "hello" is not, and should never be, considered valid. Yet an HtmlSize appears to be defined to be any u64 or String

In the interest of avoiding invalid values and clarifying the meanings of valid values, I'd personally go for a slightly more opinionated approach, with more explicit names, rejecting values that don't make sense as sizes. Going by your examples, I'd lean towards giving HtmlSize variants like Pixels(u64) (which would get serialized to a number), Percentage(u64) (where HtmlSize::Percentage(50) would get serialized as "50%") and perhaps more options depending on what other kinds of values we expect to see (Em(u64)? Variants for CSS keywords like max-content, auto, or inherit? Other stuff entirely?)

• Richard Neumann: Thank you. These are really good ideas. I don't need those fine-grained options at the moment, since the JSON provider currenty guarantes valid values, but I will consider implementing this as soon as I need it.