Boiler room

A boilerplate++ for a minimal rust web backend

Just fork/clone/download this repo and build your backend on it.

Why?

Both routing and error handling in rust's web frameworks feel needlessly abstracted and complex. In an attempt to make a web-backend that feels natural to me I wrote this boilerplate where Result<Response,Error> is cleanly converted into a correct Response and where routing is a tree structure.

Structure:

The main.rs file. Do I need to tell you? Defines running the application.
The state.rs file defines the state struct shared between async workers and its init.
The traits.rs file defines the trait that allows converting from Result<Response, Error> to Response.
The error.rs file defines Error, and implements the trait from traits.rs on it.
The routes directory handles everything routing.
- mod.rs starts the routing.
- The utils directory contains utility functions for:
  - routing.rs parsing and validating routing
  - request.rs parsing and validating request data
  - response.rs constructing and modifying responses
- Other directories under routes are new web-routes. The idea is that they have a route function that takes state, req, path_vec which then either returns a response or hands down into another route function. All in all resulting in a match tree structure matching the modules.

How to use:

Change license:

Replace LICENSE.md
Change license field in Cargo.toml

Adding crates:

Add to Cargo.toml
Add relevant error types to error.rs
Add relevant variable and init into state.rs

Adding routes:

The routing is intended to be done one "folder" at a time, so adding a route is easiest when it is one step from an existing one. In that case:

Create a route function (potentially skip needless arguments)
Add a match case to the nearest route function for the path you wish to add
Make that match case run that route function.

If the new path is more than one step from the nearest one you need to make a choice. Either you create multiple matches to get to the path you want, or you throw out my routing design in favour of the classic full-path matching. Especially consider if your path structure is more continuous than not. If more not, my tree routing is not for you.