The Stream Trait

The Stream trait is similar to Future but can yield multiple values before completing, similar to the Iterator trait from the standard library:

trait Stream {
    /// The type of the value yielded by the stream.
    type Item;

    /// Attempt to resolve the next item in the stream.
    /// Returns `Poll::Pending` if not ready, `Poll::Ready(Some(x))` if a value
    /// is ready, and `Poll::Ready(None)` if the stream has completed.
    fn poll_next(self: Pin<&mut Self>, cx: &mut Context<'_>)
        -> Poll<Option<Self::Item>>;
}

One common example of a Stream is the Receiver for the channel type from the futures crate. It will yield Some(val) every time a value is sent from the Sender end, and will yield None once the Sender has been dropped and all pending messages have been received:

async fn send_recv() {
    const BUFFER_SIZE: usize = 10;
    let (mut tx, mut rx) = mpsc::channel::<i32>(BUFFER_SIZE);

    tx.send(1).await.unwrap();
    tx.send(2).await.unwrap();
    drop(tx);

    // `StreamExt::next` is similar to `Iterator::next`, but returns a
    // type that implements `Future<Output = Option<T>>`.
    assert_eq!(Some(1), rx.next().await);
    assert_eq!(Some(2), rx.next().await);
    assert_eq!(None, rx.next().await);
}