Trait Stream

trait Stream

A stream of values produced asynchronously.

If Future<Output = T> is an asynchronous version of T, then Stream<Item = T> is an asynchronous version of Iterator<Item = T>. A stream represents a sequence of value-producing events that occur asynchronously to the caller.

The trait is modeled after Future, but allows poll_next to be called even after a value has been produced, yielding None once the stream has been fully exhausted.

Associated Types

type Item

Values yielded by the stream.

Required Methods

fn poll_next(self: Pin<&mut Self>, cx: &mut Context<'_>) -> Poll<Option<<Self as >::Item>>

Attempt to pull out the next value of this stream, registering the current task for wakeup if the value is not yet available, and returning None if the stream is exhausted.

Return value

There are several possible return values, each indicating a distinct stream state:

  • Poll::Pending means that this stream's next value is not ready yet. Implementations will ensure that the current task will be notified when the next value may be ready.

  • Poll::Ready(Some(val)) means that the stream has successfully produced a value, val, and may produce further values on subsequent poll_next calls.

  • Poll::Ready(None) means that the stream has terminated, and poll_next should not be invoked again.

Panics

Once a stream has finished (returned Ready(None) from poll_next), calling its poll_next method again may panic, block forever, or cause other kinds of problems; the Stream trait places no requirements on the effects of such a call. However, as the poll_next method is not marked unsafe, Rust's usual rules apply: calls must never cause undefined behavior (memory corruption, incorrect use of unsafe functions, or the like), regardless of the stream's state.

If this is difficult to guard against then the fuse adapter can be used to ensure that poll_next always returns Ready(None) in subsequent calls.

Provided Methods

fn size_hint(self: &Self) -> (usize, Option<usize>)

Returns the bounds on the remaining length of the stream.

Specifically, size_hint() returns a tuple where the first element is the lower bound, and the second element is the upper bound.

The second half of the tuple that is returned is an Option<usize>. A None here means that either there is no known upper bound, or the upper bound is larger than usize.

Implementation notes

It is not enforced that a stream implementation yields the declared number of elements. A buggy stream may yield less than the lower bound or more than the upper bound of elements.

size_hint() is primarily intended to be used for optimizations such as reserving space for the elements of the stream, but must not be trusted to e.g., omit bounds checks in unsafe code. An incorrect implementation of size_hint() should not lead to memory safety violations.

That said, the implementation should provide a correct estimation, because otherwise it would be a violation of the trait's protocol.

The default implementation returns (0, None) which is correct for any stream.

Implementors