Storing a closure in a HashMap - rust

Question

To learn the Rust language, I'm taking an old C++ library I had lying around and trying to convert it to Rust. It used a lot of C++11 closures and I'm having some difficulty getting the concepts to translate.
In C++ I had something like this:
// library.h
struct Event {
// just some data
};
class Object {
public:
// ...
std::function<void(Event&)>& makeFunc(std::string& s) {
return m_funcs[s];
}
// ...
private:
// ...
std::map<std::string, std::function<void(Event&)>> m_funcs;
// ...
};
// main.cpp using the library
int main()
{
Object foo;
foo.makeFunc("func1") = [&]{
// do stuff
};
return 0;
}
The part that I'm having trouble with is properly storing the functions in a Rust HashMap collection. I tried this:
struct Event;
struct Object {
m_funcs : HashMap<String, FnMut(&Event)>
}
impl Object {
// send f as another parameter rather than try and return borrow
// compiler was complaining
fn makeFunc(&mut self, s : &str,f: FnMut(&Event)) {
self.m_funcs.insert(String::from_str(s), f);
}
}
but it says the trait core::marker::Sized is not implemented for the type 'for('r) core::ops::FnMut(&'r CreateEvent)'
This makes sense because FnMut is a trait, and therefore has no known size for the HashMap to make at compile time. So I figure that the hashmap would require an actual pointer rather than an abstract type. So I change it to this
struct Object {
m_funcs : HashMap<String, Box<FnMut(&Event)>>
}
impl Object {
fn makeFunc(&mut self, s : &str, f: &FnMut(&Event)) {
self.m_funcs.insert(String::from_str(s), Box::new(f));
}
}
now it says the trait 'for('r) core::ops::Fn<(&'r CreateEvent,)>' is not implemented for the type '&for('r) core::ops::FnMut(&'r CreateEvent)' [E0277] at the insert. This error makes no sense to me at all. Can someone explain to me the proper way to store a reference to a non-escaping closure in a HashMap?

Answer 1

You have taken a &FnMut(&Event)—a trait object—and, after boxing it, wish to store it as a Box<FnMut(&Event)>. Thus, you require that &FnMut(&Event) must implement FnMut(&Event), which it does not (and clearly cannot, for FnMut.call_mut takes &mut self).
What you wanted was to take an arbitrary type that implements FnMut(&Event)—that is, use generics—and take it by value. The signature is thus this:
fn make_func<F: FnMut(&Event)>(&mut self, s: &str, f: F)
It gets a little more complex than this due to lifetimes, however, but what you wish to do with regards to that may vary; Storing an unboxed closure with a reference arg in a HashMap has more information on that topic. Here’s what I believe you’re most likely to want:
struct Object<'a> {
m_funcs: HashMap<String, Box<FnMut(&Event) + 'a>>,
}
impl<'a> Object<'a> {
fn make_func<F: FnMut(&Event) + 'a>(&mut self, s: &str, f: F) {
self.m_funcs.insert(String::from_str(s), Box::new(f));
}
}
You could remove all the 'a in favour of just a single + 'static bound on F if you are happy to not let any of the closures capture references to their environments.