constduck
: compile-time duck typing and reflection
constduck
provides a procmacro that can enable compile time duck typing and reflection on arbitrary struct types. It supports three main features:
- Accessing fields of any struct, using the field name
- Constructing instances from a mapping of fields to values
- Reflecting over field types at compile time
Usage
Derive ConstDuck
on a struct:
#![feature(adt_const_params)]
use constduck::*;
#[derive(ConstDuck)]
struct Donald {
money: i64,
}
Accessing fields
When deriving ConstDuck
, the trait Field<"fieldname">
is implemented for all fields of the struct. You can use the trait to write generic implementations. For example:
fn deduct_money>(t: & mut T) where N: Clone, N: Sub , N: From< i8> { t. set(t. get(). clone() - N :: from( 5i8)); }
deduct_money
will work for any struct that has a field money
and derives ConstDuck
.
You should just write a custom trait for the example above. It's not always possible to write a custom trait. For example, consider the following macro:
macro_rules! make_getter {
($struct:ident.$field:ident) => {
impl $struct {
pub fn $field(&self) -> &/* What to write here? */ {
&self.$field
}
}
}
}
struct Foo {
bar: String,
baz: u32,
}
make_getter!(Foo.bar);
In this case the function definition requires a return type, but you don't have enough information to specify the type. Using constduck
, you can write this macro as:
macro_rules! make_getter {
($struct:ident.$field:ident) => {
impl
$
struct
where
Self:
Field<{ stringify!($field) }, Ty = T> {
pub fn $
field(
&
self)
-
>
&T {
<
Self
as Field
<{
stringify!($field) }
>>
::
get(
self)
}
}
}
}
#[derive(ConstDuck)]
struct
Foo {
bar:
String,
baz:
u32,
}
make_getter!(Foo.bar);
Constructing instances
If you're storing arbitrary expressions in a new struct in a macro, you cannot use the type of the expression for the field. For example:
macro_rules! create_struct {
($struct:ident; $($name:ident: $value:expr),*) => {{
// For some good reason we want to generate a separate wrapper struct first and return that instead of collecting directly into `$struct`.
struct WrapperStruct<$($name,)*> {
$($name: $name,)*
}
impl<$($name,)*> From
<$($name,)*>>
for $
struct {
fn
from(wrapper: WrapperStruct<$($name,)*>) ->
Self {
// wrapper.counter is not guaranteed to be a u32
// So we cannot do this:
$struct {
counter: wrapper.counter,
text: wrapper.text,
}
}
}
WrapperStruct {
$($name: $value,)
*
}
}}
}
We cannot write a correct implementation for From
here, because it's normally not possible to express "type must have two fields counter: u32
and text: String
" as a constraint.
By implementing WithField
for the wrapper struct, we can write the implementation in the macro like this instead:
impl<$($name,)*> From
<$($name,)*>>
for $
struct
where $
struct:
ConstructFrom
<$($name,)*>> {
fn
from(wrapper: WrapperStruct<$($name,)*>) ->
Self {
$struct
::
construct(wrapper)
}
}
See constduck/examples/construct-instances.rs
for a full example.
Reflecting over field types at compile time
Using ConstDuck::Reflect
you can implement traits for any type (like #[derive(..)]
) without needing a procmacro. See constduck/examples/debug-print.rs
for an example.
(In)stability
This project requires Rust nightly, and uses the incomplete adt_const_params
feature. You might encounter ICEs. The current API will likely break when support for tuple structs and enums is added.
License
constduck
is licensed under the Mozilla Public License 2.0 (MPL2.0). See the LICENSE
file.