In my case, I have a trait called Resource for deserialize from bytes. Now I want to reuse a struct called List for others Resource so I write done:

struct List<T> {
    // ignore others field
    items: Vec<T>,
}

impl<T: Resource> Resource for List<T> {
    fn from_str(s: &str) -> Result<List<T>> {
        let list: List<T> = serde_json::from_str(s)?;
        Ok(list);
    }
}

Because serde_json::from_str requires impl Deserialize so we have to modify the code:

impl<T: Resource + Deserialize> Resource for List<T> {
    fn from_str(s: &str) -> Result<List<T>> {
        let list: List<T> = serde_json::from_str(s)?;
        Ok(list);
    }
}

It looks work but not. The problem is Deserialize actucally is Deserialize<'de>, when we use trait in declaration we have to satisfy all type parameters of course includes lifetime. Ok, so we write:

impl<'a, T: Resource + Deserialize<'a>> Resource for List<T> {
    fn from_str(s: &'a str) -> Result<List<T>> {
        let list: List<T> = serde_json::from_str(s)?;
        Ok(list);
    }
}

It looks good and works for most cases actually, however, in my code I hiding the whole get data and deserialize in a function, whatever it’s, would cause problem.

fn get_list_via_fetching_data<'a, T: Deserialize<'a>>() -> Result<List<T>> {
    let data = fetch(); // in my case is kubernetes api server but that's fine
    List::<T>::from_str(data)
}

Ok, you would find data is not live long enough for 'a, why? Since anyway 'a would be a outside lifetime and of course live longer than anything in the function. What can we do for this case? We have to reverse the relationship between others Resource and List, rather than see List as kind of Resource, we add a function fn from_str_to_list(s: &str) -> Result<List<Self>>; for trait Resource. Since in my case Resource impl Sized and List also has a detected size after applying a Sized T so List<Self> is Sized. Now we can have the function get_list_via_fetching_data.

Of course, for the most normal case I think we don’t need this one, and if at future '_ lifetime introduced the problem could be resolved(but I’m not sure that is for this problem actually so just a guess).

Thanks for reading and see you next time.