Rust Struct Methods

The good bit of object orientation.

Git repo: https://github.com/caveofprogramming/rust/

Struct Methods

Rust allows us to attach methods to structs, using an impl code block.

Here, &self is a shortcut way of writing self: &Self, and Self is in turn an alias for the type the function is attached to; in this case, Person.

This method can then be called via instances of Person using a dot notation.

Here I’ve defined a simple ‘get’ method, which Rust apparently has no special syntax for, but of course we can do whatever we want in a method.

We are also allowed to pass additional parameters to the method after the &self parameter.

If we create a get method for the name field as well, in total we end up with this:

Associated Functions

Rust allows us to define methods which do not have a &self parameter and so cannot access instance fields.

These are similar to class methods or static methods in other languages.

One use of this would be to add a method that returns an instance of the struct type.

Here I’ve added an associated function called new (which has no special meaning in Rust) which returns a new instance of Person.

In place of Self we could equally well use Person, if desired. It’s the same.

We can run this method via the type name of the struct and a :: syntax.