[−][src]Crate candid
Candid
Candid is an interface description language (IDL) for interacting with canisters (also known as services or actors) running on the Internet Computer.
There are three common ways that you might find yourself needing to work with Candid in Rust.
- As a typed Rust data strcuture. When you write canisters or frontend in Rust, you want to have a seamless way of converting data between Rust and Candid.
- As an untyped Candid value. When you write generic tools for the Internet Computer without knowing the type of the Candid data.
- As text data. When you get the data from CLI or read from a file, you can use the provided parser to send/receive messages.
Candid provides efficient, flexible and safe ways of converting data between each of these representations.
Operating on native Rust values
We are using a builder pattern to encode/decode Candid messages, see candid::ser::IDLBuilder
for serialization and candid::de::IDLDeserialize
for deserialization.
fn builder_example() -> Result<(), candid::Error> { // Serialize 10 numbers to Candid binary format let mut ser = candid::ser::IDLBuilder::new(); for i in 0..10 { ser.arg(&i)?; } let bytes: Vec<u8> = ser.serialize_to_vec()?; // Deserialize Candid message and verify the values match let mut de = candid::de::IDLDeserialize::new(&bytes)?; let mut i = 0; while !de.is_done() { let x = de.get_value::<i32>()?; assert_eq!(x, i); i += 1; } de.done()?; Ok(()) }
We also provide macros for encoding/decoding Candid message in a convenient way.
use candid::{Encode, Decode, Result}; fn macro_example() -> Result<()> { // Serialize two values [(42, "text")] and (42u32, "text") let bytes: Vec<u8> = Encode!(&[(42, "text")], &(42u32, "text"))?; // Deserialize the first value as type Vec<(i32, &str)>, // and the second value as type (u32, String) let (a, b) = Decode!(&bytes, Vec<(i32, &str)>, (u32, String))?; assert_eq!(a, [(42, "text")]); assert_eq!(b, (42u32, "text".to_string())); Ok(()) }
The Encode!
macro takes a sequence of Rust values, and returns a binary format Vec<u8>
that can be sent over the wire.
The Decode!
macro takes the binary message and a sequence of Rust types that you want to decode into, and returns a tuple
of Rust values of the given types.
Note that a fixed Candid message may be decoded in multiple Rust types. For example,
we can decode a Candid text
type into either String
or &str
in Rust.
Operating on user defined struct/enum
We use trait CandidType
for serialization, and Serde's Deserialize
trait for deserialization.
Any type that implements these two traits can be used for serialization and deserialization respectively.
This includes built-in Rust standard library types like Vec<T>
and Result<T, E>
, as well as any structs
or enums annotated with #[derive(CandidType, Deserialize)]
.
We do not use Serde's Serialize
trait because Candid requires serializing types along with the values.
This is difficult to achieve in Serialize
, especially for enum types. Besides serialization, CandidType
trait also converts Rust type to Candid type defined as candid::types::Type
.
use candid::{Encode, Decode, CandidType, Deserialize}; #[derive(CandidType, Deserialize)] struct List { head: i32, tail: Option<Box<List>>, } let list = List { head: 42, tail: None }; let bytes = Encode!(&list).unwrap(); let res = Decode!(&bytes, List);
Operating on big integers
To support big integer types Candid::Int
and Candid::Nat
,
we use the num_bigint
crate. We provide interface to convert i64
, u64
and &[u8]
to big integers.
use candid::{Int, Nat, Encode, Decode, Result}; fn bigint_examples() -> Result<()> { let x = Int::parse(b"-10000000000000000000")?; let bytes = Encode!(&Nat::from(1024), &x)?; let (a, b) = Decode!(&bytes, Nat, Int)?; assert_eq!(a, 1024.into()); assert_eq!(b, x); Ok(()) }
Operating on untyped Candid values
Any valid Candid value can be manipulated in an recursive enum representation candid::parser::value::IDLValue
.
We use ser.value_arg(v)
and de.get_value::<IDLValue>()
for encoding and decoding the value.
The use of Rust value and IDLValue
can be intermixed.
use candid::{Result, parser::value::IDLValue}; fn untyped_examples() -> Result<()> { // Serialize Rust value Some(42) and IDLValue "hello" let bytes = candid::ser::IDLBuilder::new() .arg(&Some(42))? .value_arg(&IDLValue::Text("hello".to_string()))? .serialize_to_vec()?; // Deserialize the first Rust value into IDLValue, // and the second IDLValue into Rust value let mut de = candid::de::IDLDeserialize::new(&bytes)?; let x = de.get_value::<IDLValue>()?; let y = de.get_value::<&str>()?; de.done()?; assert_eq!(x, IDLValue::Opt(Box::new(IDLValue::Int(42)))); assert_eq!(y, "hello"); Ok(()) }
We provide a data structure candid::IDLArgs
to represent a sequence of IDLValue
s,
and use to_bytes()
and from_bytes()
to encode and decode Candid messages.
We also provide a parser to parse Candid values in text format.
use candid::{IDLArgs, Result}; fn untyped_examples() -> Result<()> { // Candid values represented in text format let text_value = r#" (42, opt true, vec {1;2;3}, opt record {label="text"; 42="haha"}) "#; // Parse text format into IDLArgs for serialization let args: IDLArgs = text_value.parse()?; let encoded: Vec<u8> = args.to_bytes()?; // Deserialize into IDLArgs let decoded: IDLArgs = IDLArgs::from_bytes(&encoded)?; assert_eq!(args, decoded); // Convert IDLArgs to text format let output: String = decoded.to_string(); let parsed_args: IDLArgs = output.parse()?; assert_eq!(args, parsed_args); Ok(()) }
Operating on Candid AST
use candid::{IDLProg, Result, parser::types::to_pretty}; fn parser_examples() -> Result<()> { // .did file for actor signature. Most likely generated by dfx let did_file = r#" type List = record { head: int; tail: List }; service : { f : (x: blob, opt bool) -> (variant { A; B; C }); g : (List) -> (int) query; } "#; // Parse did file into an AST let ast: IDLProg = did_file.parse()?; // Pretty-print AST and access type definitions let pretty: String = to_pretty(&ast, 80); let showList = to_pretty(&ast.find_type("List")?, 80); let showMethod = to_pretty(&ast.get_method_type("g").unwrap(), 80); Ok(()) }
Re-exports
pub use error::Error; |
pub use error::Result; |
pub use number::Int; |
pub use number::Nat; |
pub use reserved::Empty; |
pub use reserved::Reserved; |
pub use types::CandidType; |
pub use parser::types::IDLProg; |
pub use parser::value::IDLArgs; |
Modules
de | Deserialize Candid binary format to Rust data structures |
error |
|
number | Data structure for Candid type Int, Nat, supporting big integer with LEB128 encoding. |
parser | Provides parser for Candid type and value. |
reserved | Data structure for Candid type Reserved and Empty. |
ser | Serialize a Rust data structure to Candid binary format |
types | Provides Candid type conversion and serialization. |
Macros
Decode | Decode Candid message into a tuple of Rust values of the given types.
Produces |
Encode | Encode sequence of Rust values into Candid message of type |
Traits
Deserialize | A data structure that can be deserialized from any data format supported by Serde. |
Derive Macros
CandidType | |
Deserialize |