/arjon-chessapi

Primary LanguageRust

Arvid Jonasson Chess API

How To Use

  • Create a chessboard using let mut board = Board::new();
  • Generate legal moves using let moves = board.generate_legal_moves();.
    • This returns a Vec<Move> of all moves available to be played from the current position.
    • Move is a struct consisting of the members from: Position, to: Position and promotion: Option<PieceType>.
      • from is the position of the piece that will be moved and to is the square that the piece will be moved to.
      • promotion needs to be set to Some(PieceType) when a pawn is moving to the last rank. Promoting to a pawn will result in an error.
        • PieceType is an enum containing all possible chess roles, e.g. Pawn, King, and so on...
    • Position is a struct consisting of the members row: i8 and col: i8. Both are in the range of 0 to 7 inclusive.
      • row = 0 corresponds to row 8 on a chessboard and row = 7 corresponds to row 1.
      • col = 0 corresponds to column A on a chessboard and col = 7 corresponds to column H.
  • Check if a move is legal by calling board.is_legal(mv) where mv is of type Move.
  • Get the current color to play by calling board.whose_turn(). This will return a value of type Color set to the color of the player that is to play the next move.
  • Use board.get_board() to get a copy of the current board state. This returns a [[SquareType; 8]; 8].
    • SquareType is a typedef for Option<Piece>, Piece is a struct containing the members piece_type: PieceType and color: Color.
    • PieceType is described above. Color is an enum consisting of White or Black.
    • The board uses row for its first index and column for its second index, i.e. board[row][column].
    • If the cell is None then the square is not occupied, and accordingly Some(Piece) means that it is occupied by a piece with the attributes of Piece.
  • Make move by calling board.make_move(mv) where mv is of type Move.
    • This will execute the move and return Ok(()) if the move is legal and refuse to execute the move and return Err(BoardError::IllegalMove) otherwise.
    • Castling is an ordinary kings move. Set from to its current position and to to its position after castling.
  • Use board.is_stalemate() to check for stalemate and board.is_checkmate() to check for checkmate.
    • If board.is_checkmate() returns true then the player that made the last move (the checkmate) won.
  • Finally reset the board by calling board = Board::new();