Traits in Cairo

A trait defines a set of methods that can be implemented by a type. These methods can be called on instances of the type when this trait is implemented. A trait combined with a generic type defines functionality a particular type has and can share with other types. We can use traits to define shared behavior in an abstract way. We can use trait bounds to specify that a generic type can be any type that has certain behavior.

Note: Traits are similar to a feature often called interfaces in other languages, although with some differences.

While traits can be written to not accept generic types, they are most useful when used with generic types. We already covered generics in the previous chapter, and we will use them in this chapter to demonstrate how traits can be used to define shared behavior for generic types.

Defining a Trait

A type’s behavior consists of the methods we can call on that type. Different types share the same behavior if we can call the same methods on all of those types. Trait definitions are a way to group method signatures together to define a set of behaviors necessary to accomplish some purpose.

For example, let’s say we have a struct NewsArticle that holds a news story in a particular location. We can define a trait Summary that describes the behavior of something that can summarize the NewsArticle type.

#[derive(Drop, Clone)]
struct NewsArticle {
    headline: ByteArray,
    location: ByteArray,
    author: ByteArray,
    content: ByteArray,
}

pub trait Summary {
    fn summarize(self: @NewsArticle) -> ByteArray;
}

impl NewsArticleSummary of Summary {
    fn summarize(self: @NewsArticle) -> ByteArray {
        format!("{:?} by {:?} ({:?})", self.headline, self.author, self.location)
    }
}

Listing 8-1: A Summary trait that consists of the behavior provided by a summarize method

In Listing 8-1, we declare a trait using the trait keyword and then the trait’s name, which is Summary in this case. We’ve also declared the trait as pub so that crates depending on this crate can make use of this trait too, as we’ll see in a few examples.

Inside the curly brackets, we declare the method signatures that describe the behaviors of the types that implement this trait, which in this case is fn summarize(self: @NewsArticle) -> ByteArray;. After the method signature, instead of providing an implementation within curly brackets, we use a semicolon.

Note: the ByteArray type is the type used to represent strings in Cairo.

As the trait is not generic, the self parameter is not generic either and is of type @NewsArticle. This means that the summarize method can only be called on instances of NewsArticle.

Now, consider that we want to make a media aggregator library crate named aggregator that can display summaries of data that might be stored in a NewsArticle or Tweet instance. To do this, we need a summary from each type, and we’ll request that summary by calling a summarize method on an instance of that type. By defining the Summary trait on generic type T, we can implement the summarize method on any type we want to be able to summarize.

mod aggregator {
    pub trait Summary<T> {
        fn summarize(self: @T) -> ByteArray;
    }

    #[derive(Drop)]
    pub struct NewsArticle {
        pub headline: ByteArray,
        pub location: ByteArray,
        pub author: ByteArray,
        pub content: ByteArray,
    }

    impl NewsArticleSummary of Summary<NewsArticle> {
        fn summarize(self: @NewsArticle) -> ByteArray {
            format!("{} by {} ({})", self.headline, self.author, self.location)
        }
    }

    #[derive(Drop)]
    pub struct Tweet {
        pub username: ByteArray,
        pub content: ByteArray,
        pub reply: bool,
        pub retweet: bool,
    }

    impl TweetSummary of Summary<Tweet> {
        fn summarize(self: @Tweet) -> ByteArray {
            format!("{}: {}", self.username, self.content)
        }
    }
}

use aggregator::{Summary, NewsArticle, Tweet};

fn main() {
    let news = NewsArticle {
        headline: "Cairo has become the most popular language for developers",
        location: "Worldwide",
        author: "Cairo Digger",
        content: "Cairo is a new programming language for zero-knowledge proofs",
    };

    let tweet = Tweet {
        username: "EliBenSasson",
        content: "Crypto is full of short-term maximizing projects. \n @Starknet and @StarkWareLtd are about long-term vision maximization.",
        reply: false,
        retweet: false
    }; // Tweet instantiation

    println!("New article available! {}", news.summarize());
    println!("New tweet! {}", tweet.summarize());
}

Listing 8-2: A Summary trait that consists of the behavior provided by a summarize method for a generic type

Each type implementing this trait must provide its own custom behavior for the body of the method. The compiler will enforce that any type that implements the Summary trait will have the method summarize defined with this signature exactly.

A trait can have multiple methods in its body: the method signatures are listed one per line and each line ends in a semicolon.

Implementing a Trait on a Type

Now that we’ve defined the desired signatures of the Summary trait’s methods, we can implement it on the types in our media aggregator. The following code shows an implementation of the Summary trait on the NewsArticle struct that uses the headline, the author, and the location to create the return value of summarize. For the Tweet struct, we define summarize as the username followed by the entire text of the tweet, assuming that tweet content is already limited to 280 characters.

mod aggregator {
    pub trait Summary<T> {
        fn summarize(self: @T) -> ByteArray;
    }

    #[derive(Drop)]
    pub struct NewsArticle {
        pub headline: ByteArray,
        pub location: ByteArray,
        pub author: ByteArray,
        pub content: ByteArray,
    }

    impl NewsArticleSummary of Summary<NewsArticle> {
        fn summarize(self: @NewsArticle) -> ByteArray {
            format!("{} by {} ({})", self.headline, self.author, self.location)
        }
    }

    #[derive(Drop)]
    pub struct Tweet {
        pub username: ByteArray,
        pub content: ByteArray,
        pub reply: bool,
        pub retweet: bool,
    }

    impl TweetSummary of Summary<Tweet> {
        fn summarize(self: @Tweet) -> ByteArray {
            format!("{}: {}", self.username, self.content)
        }
    }
}

use aggregator::{Summary, NewsArticle, Tweet};

fn main() {
    let news = NewsArticle {
        headline: "Cairo has become the most popular language for developers",
        location: "Worldwide",
        author: "Cairo Digger",
        content: "Cairo is a new programming language for zero-knowledge proofs",
    };

    let tweet = Tweet {
        username: "EliBenSasson",
        content: "Crypto is full of short-term maximizing projects. \n @Starknet and @StarkWareLtd are about long-term vision maximization.",
        reply: false,
        retweet: false
    }; // Tweet instantiation

    println!("New article available! {}", news.summarize());
    println!("New tweet! {}", tweet.summarize());
}

Listing 8-3: Implementation of the Summary trait on NewsArticle and Tweet

Implementing a trait on a type is similar to implementing regular methods. The difference is that after impl, we put a name for the implementation, then use the of keyword, and then specify the name of the trait we are writing the implementation for. If the implementation is for a generic type, we place the generic type name in the angle brackets after the trait name.

Note that for the trait method to be accessible, there must be an implementation of that trait visible from the scope where the method is called. If the trait is pub and the implementation is not, and the implementation is not visible in the scope where the trait method is called, this will cause a compilation error.

Within the impl block, we put the method signatures that the trait definition has defined. Instead of adding a semicolon after each signature, we use curly brackets and fill in the method body with the specific behavior that we want the methods of the trait to have for the particular type.

Now that the library has implemented the Summary trait on NewsArticle and Tweet, users of the crate can call the trait methods on instances of NewsArticle and Tweet in the same way we call regular methods. The only difference is that the user must bring the trait into scope as well as the types. Here’s an example of how a crate could use our aggregator crate:

mod aggregator {
    pub trait Summary<T> {
        fn summarize(self: @T) -> ByteArray;
    }

    #[derive(Drop)]
    pub struct NewsArticle {
        pub headline: ByteArray,
        pub location: ByteArray,
        pub author: ByteArray,
        pub content: ByteArray,
    }

    impl NewsArticleSummary of Summary<NewsArticle> {
        fn summarize(self: @NewsArticle) -> ByteArray {
            format!("{} by {} ({})", self.headline, self.author, self.location)
        }
    }

    #[derive(Drop)]
    pub struct Tweet {
        pub username: ByteArray,
        pub content: ByteArray,
        pub reply: bool,
        pub retweet: bool,
    }

    impl TweetSummary of Summary<Tweet> {
        fn summarize(self: @Tweet) -> ByteArray {
            format!("{}: {}", self.username, self.content)
        }
    }
}

use aggregator::{Summary, NewsArticle, Tweet};

fn main() {
    let news = NewsArticle {
        headline: "Cairo has become the most popular language for developers",
        location: "Worldwide",
        author: "Cairo Digger",
        content: "Cairo is a new programming language for zero-knowledge proofs",
    };

    let tweet = Tweet {
        username: "EliBenSasson",
        content: "Crypto is full of short-term maximizing projects. \n @Starknet and @StarkWareLtd are about long-term vision maximization.",
        reply: false,
        retweet: false
    }; // Tweet instantiation

    println!("New article available! {}", news.summarize());
    println!("New tweet! {}", tweet.summarize());
}

This code prints the following:

$ scarb cairo-run 
   Compiling no_listing_15_traits v0.1.0 (listings/ch08-generic-types-and-traits/no_listing_15_traits/Scarb.toml)
    Finished `dev` profile target(s) in 2 seconds
     Running no_listing_15_traits
New article available! Cairo has become the most popular language for developers by Cairo Digger (Worldwide)
New tweet! EliBenSasson: Crypto is full of short-term maximizing projects. 
 @Starknet and @StarkWareLtd are about long-term vision maximization.
Run completed successfully, returning []

Other crates that depend on the aggregator crate can also bring the Summary trait into scope to implement Summary on their own types.

Default Implementations

Sometimes it’s useful to have default behavior for some or all of the methods in a trait instead of requiring implementations for all methods on every type. Then, as we implement the trait on a particular type, we can keep or override each method’s default behavior.

In Listing 8-5 we specify a default string for the summarize method of the Summary trait instead of only defining the method signature, as we did in Listing 8-2.

Filename: src/lib.cairo

mod aggregator {
    pub trait Summary<T> {
        fn summarize(self: @T) -> ByteArray {
            "(Read more...)"
        }
    }

    #[derive(Drop)]
    pub struct NewsArticle {
        pub headline: ByteArray,
        pub location: ByteArray,
        pub author: ByteArray,
        pub content: ByteArray,
    }

    impl NewsArticleSummary of Summary<NewsArticle> {}

    #[derive(Drop)]
    pub struct Tweet {
        pub username: ByteArray,
        pub content: ByteArray,
        pub reply: bool,
        pub retweet: bool,
    }

    impl TweetSummary of Summary<Tweet> {
        fn summarize(self: @Tweet) -> ByteArray {
            format!("{}: {}", self.username, self.content)
        }
    }
}

use aggregator::{Summary, NewsArticle};

fn main() {
    let news = NewsArticle {
        headline: "Cairo has become the most popular language for developers",
        location: "Worldwide",
        author: "Cairo Digger",
        content: "Cairo is a new programming language for zero-knowledge proofs",
    };

    println!("New article available! {}", news.summarize());
}

Listing 8-5: Defining a Summary trait with a default implementation of the summarize method

To use a default implementation to summarize instances of NewsArticle, we specify an empty impl block with impl NewsArticleSummary of Summary<NewsArticle> {}.

Even though we’re no longer defining the summarize method on NewsArticle directly, we’ve provided a default implementation and specified that NewsArticle implements the Summary trait. As a result, we can still call the summarize method on an instance of NewsArticle, like this:

mod aggregator {
    pub trait Summary<T> {
        fn summarize(self: @T) -> ByteArray {
            "(Read more...)"
        }
    }

    #[derive(Drop)]
    pub struct NewsArticle {
        pub headline: ByteArray,
        pub location: ByteArray,
        pub author: ByteArray,
        pub content: ByteArray,
    }

    impl NewsArticleSummary of Summary<NewsArticle> {}

    #[derive(Drop)]
    pub struct Tweet {
        pub username: ByteArray,
        pub content: ByteArray,
        pub reply: bool,
        pub retweet: bool,
    }

    impl TweetSummary of Summary<Tweet> {
        fn summarize(self: @Tweet) -> ByteArray {
            format!("{}: {}", self.username, self.content)
        }
    }
}

use aggregator::{Summary, NewsArticle};

fn main() {
    let news = NewsArticle {
        headline: "Cairo has become the most popular language for developers",
        location: "Worldwide",
        author: "Cairo Digger",
        content: "Cairo is a new programming language for zero-knowledge proofs",
    };

    println!("New article available! {}", news.summarize());
}

This code prints New article available! (Read more...).

Creating a default implementation doesn’t require us to change anything about the previous implementation of Summary on Tweet. The reason is that the syntax for overriding a default implementation is the same as the syntax for implementing a trait method that doesn’t have a default implementation.

Default implementations can call other methods in the same trait, even if those other methods don’t have a default implementation. In this way, a trait can provide a lot of useful functionality and only require implementors to specify a small part of it. For example, we could define the Summary trait to have a summarize_author method whose implementation is required, and then define a summarize method that has a default implementation that calls the summarize_author method:

mod aggregator {
    pub trait Summary<T> {
        fn summarize(
            self: @T
        ) -> ByteArray {
            format!("(Read more from {}...)", Self::summarize_author(self))
        }
        fn summarize_author(self: @T) -> ByteArray;
    }

    #[derive(Drop)]
    pub struct Tweet {
        pub username: ByteArray,
        pub content: ByteArray,
        pub reply: bool,
        pub retweet: bool,
    }

    impl TweetSummary of Summary<Tweet> {
        fn summarize_author(self: @Tweet) -> ByteArray {
            format!("@{}", self.username)
        }
    }
}

use aggregator::{Summary, Tweet};

fn main() {
    let tweet = Tweet {
        username: "EliBenSasson",
        content: "Crypto is full of short-term maximizing projects. \n @Starknet and @StarkWareLtd are about long-term vision maximization.",
        reply: false,
        retweet: false
    };

    println!("1 new tweet: {}", tweet.summarize());
}

To use this version of Summary, we only need to define summarize_author when we implement the trait on a type:

mod aggregator {
    pub trait Summary<T> {
        fn summarize(
            self: @T
        ) -> ByteArray {
            format!("(Read more from {}...)", Self::summarize_author(self))
        }
        fn summarize_author(self: @T) -> ByteArray;
    }

    #[derive(Drop)]
    pub struct Tweet {
        pub username: ByteArray,
        pub content: ByteArray,
        pub reply: bool,
        pub retweet: bool,
    }

    impl TweetSummary of Summary<Tweet> {
        fn summarize_author(self: @Tweet) -> ByteArray {
            format!("@{}", self.username)
        }
    }
}

use aggregator::{Summary, Tweet};

fn main() {
    let tweet = Tweet {
        username: "EliBenSasson",
        content: "Crypto is full of short-term maximizing projects. \n @Starknet and @StarkWareLtd are about long-term vision maximization.",
        reply: false,
        retweet: false
    };

    println!("1 new tweet: {}", tweet.summarize());
}

After we define summarize_author, we can call summarize on instances of the Tweet struct, and the default implementation of summarize will call the definition of summarize_author that we’ve provided. Because we’ve implemented summarize_author, the Summary trait has given us the behavior of the summarize method without requiring us to write any more code.

mod aggregator {
    pub trait Summary<T> {
        fn summarize(
            self: @T
        ) -> ByteArray {
            format!("(Read more from {}...)", Self::summarize_author(self))
        }
        fn summarize_author(self: @T) -> ByteArray;
    }

    #[derive(Drop)]
    pub struct Tweet {
        pub username: ByteArray,
        pub content: ByteArray,
        pub reply: bool,
        pub retweet: bool,
    }

    impl TweetSummary of Summary<Tweet> {
        fn summarize_author(self: @Tweet) -> ByteArray {
            format!("@{}", self.username)
        }
    }
}

use aggregator::{Summary, Tweet};

fn main() {
    let tweet = Tweet {
        username: "EliBenSasson",
        content: "Crypto is full of short-term maximizing projects. \n @Starknet and @StarkWareLtd are about long-term vision maximization.",
        reply: false,
        retweet: false
    };

    println!("1 new tweet: {}", tweet.summarize());
}

This code prints 1 new tweet: (Read more from @EliBenSasson...).

Note that it isn’t possible to call the default implementation from an overriding implementation of that same method.

Managing and Using External Trait

To use traits methods, you need to make sure the correct traits/implementation(s) are imported. In some cases you might need to import not only the trait but also the implementation if they are declared in separate modules. If CircleGeometry implementation was in a separate module/file named circle, then to define boundary method on Circle struct, we'd need to import ShapeGeometry trait in the circle module.

If the code were to be organized into modules like in Listing 8-6 where the implementation of a trait is defined in a different module than the trait itself, explicitly importing the relevant trait or implementation would be required.

// Here T is an alias type which will be provided during implementation
pub trait ShapeGeometry<T> {
    fn boundary(self: T) -> u64;
    fn area(self: T) -> u64;
}

mod rectangle {
    // Importing ShapeGeometry is required to implement this trait for Rectangle
    use super::ShapeGeometry;

    #[derive(Copy, Drop)]
    pub struct Rectangle {
        pub height: u64,
        pub width: u64,
    }

    // Implementation RectangleGeometry passes in <Rectangle>
    // to implement the trait for that type
    impl RectangleGeometry of ShapeGeometry<Rectangle> {
        fn boundary(self: Rectangle) -> u64 {
            2 * (self.height + self.width)
        }
        fn area(self: Rectangle) -> u64 {
            self.height * self.width
        }
    }
}

mod circle {
    // Importing ShapeGeometry is required to implement this trait for Circle
    use super::ShapeGeometry;

    #[derive(Copy, Drop)]
    pub struct Circle {
        pub radius: u64
    }

    // Implementation CircleGeometry passes in <Circle>
    // to implement the imported trait for that type
    impl CircleGeometry of ShapeGeometry<Circle> {
        fn boundary(self: Circle) -> u64 {
            (2 * 314 * self.radius) / 100
        }
        fn area(self: Circle) -> u64 {
            (314 * self.radius * self.radius) / 100
        }
    }
}

use rectangle::Rectangle;
use circle::Circle;

fn main() {
    let rect = Rectangle { height: 5, width: 7 };
    println!("Rectangle area: {}", ShapeGeometry::area(rect)); //35
    println!("Rectangle boundary: {}", ShapeGeometry::boundary(rect)); //24

    let circ = Circle { radius: 5 };
    println!("Circle area: {}", ShapeGeometry::area(circ)); //78
    println!("Circle boundary: {}", ShapeGeometry::boundary(circ)); //31
}

Listing 8-6: Implementing an external trait

Note that in Listing 8-6, CircleGeometry and RectangleGeometry implementations don't need to be declared as pub. Indeed, ShapeGeometry trait, which is public, is used to print the result in the main function. The compiler will find the appropriate implementation for the ShapeGeometry public trait, regardless of the implementation visibility.

Impl Aliases

Implementations can be aliased when imported. This is most useful when you want to instantiate generic implementations with concrete types. For example, let's say we define a trait Two that is used to return the value 2 for a type T. We can write a trivial generic implementation of Two for all types that implement the One trait, simply by adding twice the value of one and returning it. However, in our public API, we may only want to expose the Two implementation for the u8 and u128 types.

trait Two<T> {
    fn two() -> T;
}

mod one_based {
    pub impl TwoImpl<
        T, +Copy<T>, +Drop<T>, +Add<T>, impl One: core::num::traits::One<T>
    > of super::Two<T> {
        fn two() -> T {
            One::one() + One::one()
        }
    }
}

pub impl U8Two = one_based::TwoImpl<u8>;
pub impl U128Two = one_based::TwoImpl<u128>;

Listing 8-7: Using impl aliases to instantiate generic impls with concrete types

We can define the generic implementation in a private module, use an impl alias to instantiate the generic implementation for these two concrete types, and make these two implementations public, while keeping the generic implementation private and unexposed. This way, we can avoid code duplication using the generic implementation, while keeping the public API clean and simple.

Negative Impls

Note: This is still an experimental feature and can only be used if experimental-features = ["negative_impls"] is enabled in your Scarb.toml file, under the [package] section.

Negative implementations, also known as negative traits or negative bounds, are a mechanism that allows you to express that a type does not implement a certain trait when defining the implementation of a trait over a generic type. Negative impls enable you to write implementations that are applicable only when another implementation does not exist in the current scope.

For example, let's say we have a trait Producer and a trait Consumer, and we want to define a generic behavior where all types implement the Consumer trait by default. However, we want to ensure that no type can be both a Consumer and a Producer. We can use negative impls to express this restriction.

In Listing 8-8, we define a ProducerType that implements the Producer trait, and two other types, AnotherType and AThirdType, which do not implement the Producer trait. We then use negative impls to create a default implementation of the Consumer trait for all types that do not implement the Producer trait.

#[derive(Drop)]
struct ProducerType {}

#[derive(Drop, Debug)]
struct AnotherType {}

#[derive(Drop, Debug)]
struct AThirdType {}

trait Producer<T> {
    fn produce(self: T) -> u32;
}

trait Consumer<T> {
    fn consume(self: T, input: u32);
}

impl ProducerImpl of Producer<ProducerType> {
    fn produce(self: ProducerType) -> u32 {
        42
    }
}

impl TConsumerImpl<T, +core::fmt::Debug<T>, +Drop<T>, -Producer<T>> of Consumer<T> {
    fn consume(self: T, input: u32) {
        println!("{:?} consumed value: {}", self, input);
    }
}

fn main() {
    let producer = ProducerType {};
    let another_type = AnotherType {};
    let third_type = AThirdType {};
    let production = producer.produce();

    // producer.consume(production); Invalid: ProducerType does not implement Consumer
    another_type.consume(production);
    third_type.consume(production);
}

Listing 8-8: Using negative impls to enforce that a type cannot implement both Producer and Consumer traits simultaneously

In the main function, we create instances of ProducerType, AnotherType, and AThirdType. We then call the produce method on the producer instance and pass the result to the consume method on the another_type and third_type instances. Finally, we try to call the consume method on the producer instance, which results in a compile-time error because ProducerType does not implement the Consumer trait.