Trait From

pub trait From<T>: Sized

Used to do value-to-value conversions while consuming the input value. It is the reciprocal of Into.

One should always prefer implementing From over Into because implementing From automatically provides one with an implementation of Into thanks to the blanket implementation in the standard library.

Only implement Into when targeting a version prior to Rust 1.41 and converting to a type outside the current crate. From was not able to do these types of conversions in earlier versions because of Rust's orphaning rules. See Into for more details.

Prefer using Into over From when specifying trait bounds on a generic function to ensure that types that only implement Into can be used as well.

The From trait is also very useful when performing error handling. When constructing a function that is capable of failing, the return type will generally be of the form Result<T, E>. From simplifies error handling by allowing a function to return a single error type that encapsulates multiple error types. See the "Examples" section and the book for more details.

Note: This trait must not fail. The From trait is intended for perfect conversions. If the conversion can fail or is not perfect, use TryFrom.

Generic Implementations

When to implement From

While there's no technical restrictions on which conversions can be done using a From implementation, the general expectation is that the conversions should typically be restricted as follows:

Examples

String implements From<&str>:

An explicit conversion from a &str to a String is done as follows:

let string = "hello".to_string();
let other_string = String::from("hello");

assert_eq!(string, other_string);

While performing error handling it is often useful to implement From for your own error type. By converting underlying error types to our own custom error type that encapsulates the underlying error type, we can return a single error type without losing information on the underlying cause. The '?' operator automatically converts the underlying error type to our custom error type with From::from.

use std::fs;
use std::io;
use std::num;

enum CliError {
    IoError(io::Error),
    ParseError(num::ParseIntError),
}

impl From<io::Error> for CliError {
    fn from(error: io::Error) -> Self {
        CliError::IoError(error)
    }
}

impl From<num::ParseIntError> for CliError {
    fn from(error: num::ParseIntError) -> Self {
        CliError::ParseError(error)
    }
}

fn open_and_parse_file(file_name: &str) -> Result<i32, CliError> {
    let mut contents = fs::read_to_string(&file_name)?;
    let num: i32 = contents.trim().parse()?;
    Ok(num)
}

Required Methods

fn from(value: T) -> Self

Converts to this type from the input type.

Implementors