Building a state machine

To solidify the concept of state machines, let's start with a simple example. Here's a simple data structure representing a counter. It stores an integer and gives us methods to modify it.

struct Counter {value: i64}

impl Counter {
    pub fn add(&mut self, i: i64) {
        self.value += i;
    }

    pub fn subtract(&mut self, i: i64) {
        self.value -= i;
    }

    pub fn reset(&mut self, i: i64) {
        self.value = 0;
    }
}

fn main() {}

By inspecting the code, you can see that Counter satisfies condition #3 of a state machine in Aper: its updates are deterministic. It does not, however, satisfy conditions #1 and #2: it does not implement StateMachine, and methods other than apply mutate the state.

(By the way, a good way to check if #2 is satisfied is to look for which methods take &mut self. In an Aper state machine, only apply should need a mutable reference to self. This is a good heuristic but not a guarantee, since a non-mut self could still use interior mutability.)

We can turn Counter into a state machine like this:

use aper::{StateMachine, NeverConflict};
use serde::{Serialize, Deserialize};

#[derive(Serialize, Deserialize, Debug, Clone)]
struct Counter {value: i64}

#[derive(Serialize, Deserialize, Debug, Clone, PartialEq)]
enum CounterTransition {
   Add(i64),
   Subtract(i64),
   Reset,
}

impl StateMachine for Counter {
    type Transition = CounterTransition;
    type Conflict = NeverConflict;

    fn apply(&self, event: &CounterTransition) -> Result<Counter, NeverConflict> {
        match event {
            CounterTransition::Add(i) => {
                Ok(Counter {value: self.value + i})
            }
            CounterTransition::Subtract(i) => {
                Ok(Counter {value: self.value - i})
            }
            CounterTransition::Reset => {
                Ok(Counter {value: 0})
            }
        }
    }
}
fn main() {}

Now, any attempt to modify the state of the counter must flow through apply as a CounterTransition. We could use CounterTransition's constructors directly, but the idiomatic approach that Aper encourages is to implement methods with the same signatures as our original modifiers but that return the Transition type:

use aper::{StateMachine};
use serde::{Serialize, Deserialize};

#[derive(Serialize, Deserialize, Debug, Clone)]
struct Counter {value: i64}

#[derive(Serialize, Deserialize, Debug, Clone, PartialEq)]
enum CounterTransition {
   Add(i64),
   Subtract(i64),
   Reset,
}

impl Counter {
    pub fn add(&self, i: i64) -> CounterTransition {
        CounterTransition::Add(i)
    }

    pub fn subtract(&self, i: i64) -> CounterTransition {
        CounterTransition::Subtract(i)
    }

    pub fn reset(&self, i: i64) -> CounterTransition {
        CounterTransition::Reset
    }
}
fn main() {}

Notice how these no longer require a mutable reference to self, since they do not actually make any changes, they just return an object representing the change. In fact, in this case they don't even read from self, but that would be allowed and comes in handy when we deal with more complex update logic.

I started by showing you how to implement your own state machine because I wanted you to see that it isn't scary, but implementing state machines from scratch isn't the only way to use Aper. In the next few sections, I'll show you how to build state machines by composing together primitives that Aper provides.