uci/src/lib.rs

//! UCI is a simple library to allow people to ignore the lower-level protocol needed to create chess engines.
//! The engine is fully generic. By specifying a valid reader and writing you can send the messages to STDIN
//! and STDOUT, per the standard - or to memory for testing.

mod commands;

use std::fmt;

#[derive(Debug)]
pub struct Engine<'a, R, W> {
  pub name: &'a str,
  pub author: &'a str,
  pub reader: R,
  pub writer: W,
}

/// Notes to delete later:
///
///
///  A way to make this comfortable for users to use is this provides easy access to commands as well as a
///  loop and stuff they can use. This way they don't have to override anything - they just include this
///  in their code for their engine to make the communication portion easy.
///
///  Think of this in the manner of a game engine. They don't provide the loop and everything, but they do
///  provide convenience functions and stuff to make _building_ that loop easier.
///
///  In other words, the engine writer still needs to know how the standard works. They just don't need to
///  implement all the nasty details.
///  For example, a start up function calls the correct "boot up" code for the engine so they only have to
///  worry about calling "boot up" prior to their main engine loop.
///
///  Additionally this code should have a parser. You call it with the reader supplied and it waits for a command
///  and parses it into a tuple of some kind for the user.

impl<'a> Engine<'a, R, W> {
  pub fn new(name: &'a str, author: &'a str, reader: R, writer: W) -> Engine<'a> {
    Engine {
      name: name,
      author: author,
      reader: R,
      writer: W,
    }
  }

  /// Sends identification messages to the writer for the GUI to pick up
  /// TODO: Write tests for this. Reference:
  /// https://stackoverflow.com/questions/28370126/how-can-i-test-stdin-and-stdout
  pub fn identify(&mut self) {
    let name_id: String = format!("{} {} {}", commands::ID, commands::NAME, self.name);
    let author_id: String = format!("{} {} {}", commands::ID, commands::AUTHOR, self.author);

    // For these two writes we can panic - there's no possibility of recovery if the engine fails at this stage
    write!(&mut self.writer, "{}", name_id).expect("failed to send name identification to writer");
    write!(&mut self.writer, "{}", author_id).expect("failed to send author identification to writer");
  }
}