private-fields-with-accessors

name	private-fields-with-accessors
description	Use when adding a public struct or changing a field's visibility in a Rust library crate — keep fields encapsulated so the layout can evolve without breaking callers.
metadata	{"author":"0xMiden"}

Keep Struct Fields Private; Expose Accessors

Rule

Public structs in library crates have private fields. Read access goes through an pub fn field(&self) -> &T accessor; mutation goes through dedicated methods (no pub fn field_mut).

Exceptions:

• "Open" data types whose layout is part of the contract (e.g. Point { x, y }) may have public fields, but they should be #[non_exhaustive].
• Internal/pub(crate) types may have public fields when keeping them private adds no value.

Why

Public fields freeze the representation: you can't rename, retype, split, or compute-on-read them without breaking every caller. An accessor lets a field become a computed expression in a later release with no one noticing.

Examples

// Good
pub struct FungibleTokenMetadata {
    name: Box<str>,
    supply: u64,
}

impl FungibleTokenMetadata {
    pub fn name(&self) -> &str { &self.name }
    pub fn supply(&self) -> u64 { self.supply }
}

// Bad: every consumer locked to these field names and types forever
pub struct FungibleTokenMetadata {
    pub name: String,
    pub supply: u64,
}

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Source: 0xMiden/protocol — distributed by TomeVault.