Enumerations

An enumeration defined in Rust code as

enum Animal {
    Dog,
    Cat,
}

Can be exposed in the UDL file with:

enum Animal {
  "Dog",
  "Cat",
};

Enums with fields

Enumerations with associated data require a different syntax, due to the limitations of using WebIDL as the basis for UniFFI's interface language. An enum like this in Rust:

enum IpAddr {
  V4 {q1: u8, q2: u8, q3: u8, q4: u8},
  V6 {addr: string},
}

Can be exposed in the UDL file with:

[Enum]
interface IpAddr {
  V4(u8 q1, u8 q2, u8 q3, u8 q4);
  V6(string addr);
};

Only enums with named fields are supported by this syntax. However, procmacros support more flexible enums.

#[derive(uniffi::Enum)]
pub enum MyEnum {
    None,
    Str(String),
    All { s: String, i: i64 }
}

Remote, non-exhaustive enums

One corner case is an enum that's: - Defined in another crate. - Has the non_exhaustive` attribute.

In this case, UniFFI needs to generate a default arm when matching against the enum variants, or else a compile error will be generated. Use the [NonExhaustive] attribute to handle this case:

[Enum]
[NonExhaustive]
interface Message {
  Send(u32 from, u32 to, string contents);
  Quit();
};

Note: since UniFFI generates a default arm, if you leave out a variant, or if the upstream crate adds a new variant, this won't be caught at compile time. Any attempt to pass that variant across the FFI will result in a panic.