Compound data types in Rust - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Working with Compound Data Types in Rust

📖 Scenario: You are building a simple program to store and display information about a book in a library system.

🎯 Goal: Create a compound data type using a struct to hold book details, then use it to store and print information about a specific book.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a struct named Book with fields for title, author, and year

Create a variable of type Book with specific values

Access the fields of the Book variable

Print the book information in a readable format

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Compound data types like structs help organize related information together, such as details about books, users, or products in real applications.

💼 Career

Understanding how to create and use structs is essential for Rust programming jobs, especially in systems programming, web backend, and data modeling.

1

Define the Book struct

Write a struct named Book with three fields: title and author of type String, and year of type u32.

Rust

// Define the Book struct with title, author, and year fields
// Your code here

Need a hint?

Use struct Book { title: String, author: String, year: u32 } to define the compound data type.

2

Create a Book instance

Create a variable named my_book of type Book with title set to "The Rust Book", author set to "Steve", and year set to 2021.

Rust

struct Book {
    title: String,
    author: String,
    year: u32,
}

// Create my_book variable with the given values
// Your code here

Need a hint?

Use let my_book = Book { title: String::from("The Rust Book"), author: String::from("Steve"), year: 2021 };

3

Access the fields of my_book

Create three variables named book_title, book_author, and book_year that get the values from my_book.title, my_book.author, and my_book.year respectively.

Rust

struct Book {
    title: String,
    author: String,
    year: u32,
}

let my_book = Book {
    title: String::from("The Rust Book"),
    author: String::from("Steve"),
    year: 2021,
};

// Get the fields from my_book into separate variables
// Your code here

Need a hint?

Use let book_title = &my_book.title; and similar for author and year.

4

Print the book information

Use println! to display the book information in this exact format: "Title: The Rust Book, Author: Steve, Year: 2021" using the variables book_title, book_author, and book_year.

Rust

struct Book {
    title: String,
    author: String,
    year: u32,
}

let my_book = Book {
    title: String::from("The Rust Book"),
    author: String::from("Steve"),
    year: 2021,
};

let book_title = &my_book.title;
let book_author = &my_book.author;
let book_year = my_book.year;

// Print the book information in the required format
// Your code here

Need a hint?

Use println!("Title: {}, Author: {}, Year: {}", book_title, book_author, book_year);