How trait with lifetime can be a trouble and how to fix it
In my case, I have a trait called Resource for deserialize from bytes.
Now I want to reuse a struct called List for others Resource so I
write done:
struct List<T> {
// ignore others field
items: Vec<T>,
}
impl<T: Resource> Resource for List<T> {
fn from_str(s: &str) -> Result<List<T>> {
let list: List<T> = serde_json::from_str(s)?;
Ok(list);
}
}
Because serde_json::from_str requires impl Deserialize so we have to
modify the code:
impl<T: Resource + Deserialize> Resource for List<T> {
fn from_str(s: &str) -> Result<List<T>> {
let list: List<T> = serde_json::from_str(s)?;
Ok(list);
}
}
It looks work but not. The problem is Deserialize actually is
Deserialize<'de>, when we use the trait in the declaration we have to
satisfy all type parameters of course includes lifetime. Ok, so we
write:
impl<'a, T: Resource + Deserialize<'a>> Resource for List<T> {
fn from_str(s: &'a str) -> Result<List<T>> {
let list: List<T> = serde_json::from_str(s)?;
Ok(list);
}
}
It looks good and works for most cases actually, however, in my code I hiding the whole get data and deserialize in a function, whatever it's, would cause a problem.
fn get_list_via_fetching_data<'a, T: Deserialize<'a>>() -> Result<List<T>> {
let data = fetch(); // in my case is kubernetes api server but that's fine
List::<T>::from_str(data)
}
Ok, you would find data is not live long enough for 'a, why? Since
anyway 'a would be an outside lifetime and of course, live longer than
anything in the function. What can we do for this case? We have to
reverse the relationship between others Resource and List, rather
than see List as kind of Resource, we add a function
fn from_str_to_list(s: &str) -> Result<List<Self>>; for trait
Resource. Since in my case Resource impl Sized and List also has
a detected size after applying a Sized T so List<Self> is Sized.
Now we can have the function get_list_via_fetching_data.
Of course, for the most normal case I think we don't need this one, and
if at future '_ lifetime introduced the problem could be resolved(but
I'm not sure that is for this problem actually so just a guess).
Thanks for reading and see you next time.