# any_handle
[](https://crates.io/crates/any_handle) [](https://docs.rs/any_handle) [](https://github.com/emctague/any_handle) [](https://opensource.org/license/mit/)
`any_handle` provides a reference-counting smart pointer type, `AnyHandle<T>`,
which can store a value of a type `T`. The special `AnyHandle<dyn Any>` allows for
downcasting to any other `AnyHandle<T: Any>` type.
Internally, an `AnyHandle` is an `Arc<RwLock<Box<dyn Any>>>`, and matches the
reference-counting behaviour of `Arc` as well as the many-readers-or-one-writer
thread safety model of `RwLock`.
```rust
use any_handle::{AnyHandle, Any};
struct SomeStruct (i32);
fn main() {
// Initialize a handle with an unknown type.
// If you want to pass in a Box<dyn SomeOtherTrait>, instead of a concrete
// type, you will have to use `#![feature(trait_upcasting)]`, unfortunately.
let handle: AnyHandle<dyn Any> = AnyHandle::new(Box::new(SomeStruct(12)));
// Now we can put it in some sort of generic container...
// ...and when we retrieve it later:
let mut handle: AnyHandle<SomeStruct> = handle.into()?;
handle.write().do_mut_things_with();
handle.read().do_things_with();
}
```