From e480ead6f92953f2115750a386cbf1a94e178fdd Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Jan-Erik Rediger Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2014 11:10:46 +0200 Subject: [PATCH] new post: A Rust library for LibLZF --- .../2014-10-15-a-rust-library-for-liblzf.md | 43 +++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 43 insertions(+) create mode 100644 _posts/2014-10-15-a-rust-library-for-liblzf.md diff --git a/_posts/2014-10-15-a-rust-library-for-liblzf.md b/_posts/2014-10-15-a-rust-library-for-liblzf.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..06ad7f6 --- /dev/null +++ b/_posts/2014-10-15-a-rust-library-for-liblzf.md @@ -0,0 +1,43 @@ +--- +layout: post +title: A Rust library for LibLZF +date: 15.10.2014 11:10 +--- + +In the last four months I did not produce much open-source code. I was busy writing my Bachelor Thesis. +But I was active in the community, I attended several conferences, I read a lot of stuff and I wrote down a lot more things to do. + +One of these things was "learn Rust", as you might figure (and writing more). +Well, I submitted my thesis on Monday and went on to write some actual Rust code. + +So I created [lzf-rs][], a wrapper around [LibLZF][], a super small and fast compression library, originally written by Marc Lehmann. +LibLZF consists of just 4 files and is super-easy to compile as a small library. +LibLZF itself is used by [Redis](https://github.com/antirez/redis/blob/3c6f9ac37c849c82aebf5b45e895faa6cc80e7be/src/rdb.c#L222) for compressing strings in the RDB, +that's how I got to know it. I still don't know how it works, but I want to learn it now (and maybe port the whole code to Rust instead of using a wrapper around the C library?) + +I used Rust's [Foreign Function Interface][ffi] to write the wrapper. Accessing C code from within Rust is quite simple. +The hard part is choosing the right data types and writing the API in a safe and usable way. +I'm not 100% happy with the current API of lzf-rs, so expect it to change. +I'm still in the process of figuring out what to expose and what not. + +And now, enough of the talking. This is how to use the library: + +~~~rust +use lzf; + +fn main() { + let data = "foobar"; + + let compressed = lzf::compress(data.as_bytes()).unwrap(); + + let decompressed = lzf::decompress(compressed.as_slice(), data.len()).unwrap(); +} +~~~ + +I'm happy to get some feedback. It's my first serious Rust code, so prone to bugs and maybe not to Rusty afterall. +Ping me on [Twitter][], drop me an [email](mailto:badboy@archlinux.us) or [open an issue](https://github.com/badboy/lzf-rs/issues). + +[lzf-rs]: https://github.com/badboy/lzf-rs +[liblzf]: https://github.com/badboy/lzf-rs/blob/master +[ffi]: http://doc.rust-lang.org/guide-ffi.html +[twitter]: https://twitter.com/badboy_