Struct v8::Local

#[repr(C)]
pub struct Local<'s, T>(/* private fields */);

An object reference managed by the v8 garbage collector.

All objects returned from v8 have to be tracked by the garbage collector so that it knows that the objects are still alive. Also, because the garbage collector may move objects, it is unsafe to point directly to an object. Instead, all objects are stored in handles which are known by the garbage collector and updated whenever an object moves. Handles should always be passed by value (except in cases like out-parameters) and they should never be allocated on the heap.

There are two types of handles: local and persistent handles.

Local handles are light-weight and transient and typically used in local operations. They are managed by HandleScopes. That means that a HandleScope must exist on the stack when they are created and that they are only valid inside of the HandleScope active during their creation. For passing a local handle to an outer HandleScope, an EscapableHandleScope and its Escape() method must be used.

Persistent handles can be used when storing objects across several independent operations and have to be explicitly deallocated when they’re no longer used.

It is safe to extract the object stored in the handle by dereferencing the handle (for instance, to extract the *Object from a Local