In my limited understanding of Rust, I believed that traits were like interfaces - when you implemented one, you needed to implement all of the methods.
I'm now writing a custom serde::Deserializer.
Looking at https://docs.serde.rs/serde/de/trait.Visitor.html#example
/// A visitor that deserializes a long string - a string containing at least
/// some minimum number of bytes.
struct LongString {
min: usize,
}
impl<'de> Visitor<'de> for LongString {
type Value = String;
fn expecting(&self, formatter: &mut fmt::Formatter) -> fmt::Result {
write!(formatter, "a string containing at least {} bytes", self.min)
}
fn visit_str<E>(self, s: &str) -> Result<Self::Value, E>
where
E: de::Error,
{
if s.len() >= self.min {
Ok(s.to_owned())
} else {
Err(de::Error::invalid_value(Unexpected::Str(s), &self))
}
}
}
and https://serde.rs/impl-deserialize.html
use std::fmt;
use serde::de::{self, Visitor};
struct I32Visitor;
impl<'de> Visitor<'de> for I32Visitor {
type Value = i32;
fn expecting(&self, formatter: &mut fmt::Formatter) -> fmt::Result {
formatter.write_str("an integer between -2^31 and 2^31")
}
fn visit_i8<E>(self, value: i8) -> Result<Self::Value, E>
where
E: de::Error,
{
Ok(i32::from(value))
}
fn visit_i32<E>(self, value: i32) -> Result<Self::Value, E>
where
E: de::Error,
{
Ok(value)
}
fn visit_i64<E>(self, value: i64) -> Result<Self::Value, E>
where
E: de::Error,
{
use std::i32;
if value >= i64::from(i32::MIN) && value <= i64::from(i32::MAX) {
Ok(value as i32)
} else {
Err(E::custom(format!("i32 out of range: {}", value)))
}
}
// Similar for other methods:
// - visit_i16
// - visit_u8
// - visit_u16
// - visit_u32
// - visit_u64
}
It seems like the Visitor trait is magic - you just need to implement the methods you feel like implementing and the others default to some form of error.
How does this magic work?