rustborrow-checkerrefcell

Rust: How to return a reference to an Rc<RefCell<HashMap<K, V>> value?


I'm trying to learn Rust and I'm having some problems with different smart pointers and stuff.

Here is my code:

pub struct MyMap<T> {
    map: Rc<RefCell<HashMap<String, T>>>,
}

impl <T> MyMap<T> {
    // Not entire sure if it's supposed to be Option<Ref<T>> or something else here.
    pub fn get(&self, key: &str) -> Option<Ref<T>> {
        todo!("What do I do here?")
    }
}

The closest I've got is by searching the HashMap twice:

impl <T> MyMap<T> {
    pub fn get(&self, key: &str) -> Option<Ref<T>> {
        if self.map.borrow().contains_key(key) {
            Some(Ref::map(self.map.borrow(), |m| m.get(key).unwrap()))
        } else {
            None
        }
    }
}

Which isn't very elegant to say the least.


Solution

  • Two solutions that come to my mind:


    filter_map:

    #![feature(cell_filter_map)]
    
    use std::{
        cell::{Ref, RefCell},
        collections::HashMap,
        rc::Rc,
    };
    
    pub struct MyMap<T> {
        map: Rc<RefCell<HashMap<String, T>>>,
    }
    
    impl<T> MyMap<T> {
        pub fn get(&self, key: &str) -> Option<Ref<T>> {
            Ref::filter_map(self.map.borrow(), |map| map.get(key)).ok()
        }
    }
    
    fn main() {
        let map: MyMap<u32> = MyMap {
            map: Rc::new(RefCell::new(HashMap::from([
                ("meaning".to_string(), 42),
                ("nice".to_string(), 69),
            ]))),
        };
    
        println!("{:?}", map.get("meaning"));
    }
    
    Some(42)
    

    Context manager:

    The idea here is that instead of returning a reference, you pass in a closure of the action that needs the value. That entirely circumvents the lifetime problem, because the variables inside of the get (or with_value in the example below) are still in scope while the closure gets executed.

    use std::{cell::RefCell, collections::HashMap, rc::Rc};
    
    pub struct MyMap<T> {
        map: Rc<RefCell<HashMap<String, T>>>,
    }
    
    impl<T> MyMap<T> {
        pub fn with_value<F, O>(&self, key: &str, f: F) -> O
        where
            F: FnOnce(Option<&T>) -> O,
        {
            f(self.map.borrow().get(key))
        }
    }
    
    fn main() {
        let map: MyMap<u32> = MyMap {
            map: Rc::new(RefCell::new(HashMap::from([
                ("meaning".to_string(), 42),
                ("nice".to_string(), 69),
            ]))),
        };
    
        map.with_value("meaning", |value| {
            println!("{:?}", value);
        });
    }
    
    Some(42)