I'm trying to do struct serialization, in which the bytes would eventually be sent down a pipe, reconstructed and methods be called on them.
I created a trait these structs would implement as appropriate and I'm using serde and serde-cbor for serialization:
extern crate serde_cbor;
#[macro_use]
extern crate serde_derive;
extern crate serde;
use serde_cbor::ser::*;
use serde_cbor::de::*;
trait Contract {
fn do_something(&self);
}
#[derive(Debug, Serialize, Deserialize)]
struct Foo {
x: u32,
y: u32,
}
#[derive(Debug, Serialize, Deserialize)]
struct Bar {
data: Vec<Foo>,
}
#[derive(Debug, Serialize, Deserialize)]
struct Baz {
data: Vec<Foo>,
tag: String,
}
impl Contract for Bar {
fn do_something(&self) {
println!("I'm a Bar and this is my data {:?}", self.data);
}
}
impl Contract for Baz {
fn do_something(&self) {
println!("I'm Baz {} and this is my data {:?}", self.tag, self.data);
}
}
fn main() {
let data = Bar { data: vec![Foo { x: 1, y: 2 }, Foo { x: 3, y: 4 }, Foo { x: 7, y: 8 }] };
data.do_something();
let value = to_vec(&data).unwrap();
let res: Result<Contract, _> = from_reader(&value[..]);
let res = res.unwrap();
println!("{:?}", res);
res.do_something();
}
When I try to reconstruct the bytes using the trait as the type (given that I wouldn't know which underlying object is being sent), the compiler complains that the trait does not implement the Sized
trait:
error[E0277]: the trait bound `Contract: std::marker::Sized` is not satisfied --> src/main.rs:52:15 | 52 | let res: Result<Contract, _> = from_reader(&value[..]); | ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ the trait `std::marker::Sized` is not implemented for `Contract` | = note: `Contract` does not have a constant size known at compile-time = note: required by `std::result::Result`
I guess it makes sense since the compiler doesn't know how big the struct is supposed to be and doesn't know how to line up the bytes for it. If I change the line where I deserialize the object to specify the actual struct type, it works:
let res: Result<Bar, _> = from_reader(&value[..]);
Is there a better pattern to achieve this serialization + polymorphism behavior?
It looks like you fell into the same trap that I fell into when I moved from C++ to Rust. Trying to use polymorphism to model a fixed set of variants of a type. Rust's enums (similar to Haskell's enums, and equivalent to Ada's variant record types) are different from classical enums in other languages, because the enum variants can have fields of their own.
I suggest you change your code to
#[derive(Debug, Serialize, Deserialize)]
enum Contract {
Bar { data: Vec<Foo> },
Baz { data: Vec<Foo>, tag: String },
}
#[derive(Debug, Serialize, Deserialize)]
struct Foo {
x: u32,
y: u32,
}
impl Contract {
fn do_something(&self) {
match *self {
Contract::Bar { ref data } => println!("I'm a Bar and this is my data {:?}", data),
Contract::Baz { ref data, ref tag } => {
println!("I'm Baz {} and this is my data {:?}", tag, data)
}
}
}
}
Adding on to oli_obk's answer, you can use Serde's enum representation to distinguish between the types.
Here, I use the internally-tagged representation to deserialize these two similar objects into the appropriate variant:
{
"driver": "file",
"path": "/var/log/foo"
}
{
"driver": "http",
"port": 8080,
"endpoint": "/api/bar"
}
use serde; // 1.0.82
use serde_derive::*; // 1.0.82
use serde_json; // 1.0.33
#[derive(Debug, Deserialize, PartialEq)]
#[serde(tag = "driver")]
enum Driver {
#[serde(rename = "file")]
File { path: String },
#[serde(rename = "http")]
Http { port: u16, endpoint: String }
}
fn main() {
let f = r#"
{
"driver": "file",
"path": "/var/log/foo"
}
"#;
let h = r#"
{
"driver": "http",
"port": 8080,
"endpoint": "/api/bar"
}
"#;
let f: Driver = serde_json::from_str(f).unwrap();
assert_eq!(f, Driver::File { path: "/var/log/foo".into() });
let h: Driver = serde_json::from_str(h).unwrap();
assert_eq!(h, Driver::Http { port: 8080, endpoint: "/api/bar".into() });
}
You don't have to squash it all into one enum, you can create separate types as well:
#[derive(Debug, Deserialize, PartialEq)]
#[serde(tag = "driver")]
enum Driver {
#[serde(rename = "file")]
File(File),
#[serde(rename = "http")]
Http(Http),
}
#[derive(Debug, Deserialize, PartialEq)]
struct File {
path: String,
}
#[derive(Debug, Deserialize, PartialEq)]
struct Http {
port: u16,
endpoint: String,
}
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