Every wanted to write incredibly generic code? and in the middle of it wanted to access a field inside it? We generally end up using a trait and binding the behavior of accessing to certain ambiguous function and then forgetting it. It's alright we all have done it, it's so common in fact that other generic and statically typed language provide us with a way to do that. It's call the lens operator. So, why not employ it for rust too.
There are exactly 3 traits that we need to concern ourself with, See
, Load
and a special trait Look
. Derive See
on your structure and bam! now your struct
has implemented See
for all it's fields.
But it won't take effect on the counter part it will throw some error, it's alright thats where Load
trait comes into picture. The sole purpose of this trait is to load all the visitor for any fields that were found during derivation. So, the this reason consider using it after all the #[derive(See)]
in your codebase.
Though See
provides us with ample ways to access inner field states, yet the syntax isn't friendly and easily understandable for someone new to rust. To counteract this Look
trait is implemented. Though by looking at the macro expansion it isn't obvious. It's actually auto implemented after certain conditions are met.
Checkout this example, it will make a lot of thing clear
```rust use see::{See, Look, see_derive::{Look, self}}; // ↑ ↑ // | +------ The derive // +----------------------------- The trait
struct Point2D { x: i32, y: i32 }
struct Point3D { x: i32, y: i32, z: i32 }
// Once done using the derive or loading modules that have these derive calls do this seederive::autoload!();
// Done! Now let's write a function that modifies x coordinate
fn modifyx
fn modifyyLook
is exactly similar to See
{
loc[see
fn main3d() { let p = Point3D { x: 0, y: 0, z: 0 }; // go left modifyx(&mut p, -1); // go right modifyx(&mut p, 1); } fn main2d() { let p = Point2D { x: 0, y: 0 }; // go left modifyx(&mut p, -1); // go right modifyx(&mut p, 1); } ```
See
trait to get raw access to the methods
fn get(&self) -> &Self::Inner
here the inner is the type of the data in questionfn set(&mut self) -> &mut Self::Inner
Look
trait to have similar access, as it extends the See
trait. But also allows more verbose way of access control while also allowing a simpler interface when trying to access multiple fields from a generic struct