Rusty

rusty is a pet project aimed at learning Rust. The scope of this project is to create the backend for a simple, instant messaging app like Slack or Discord.

Some features:

• Written in Rust for blazing fast performance
• Leverages one of the fastest HTTP web server in Actix Web
• Uses Domain-Driven Design for a clear codebase that is easily extendible
• Secure authentication with JSON Web Tokens

Installation

Before starting the service, we must create a .env file. The .env file must contain the following environment variables.

DATABASE_URL=
JWT_SECRET_KEY=
POSTGRES_USER=
POSTGRES_PASSWORD=
DATABASE_NAME=rusty
POSTGRES_CONTAINER_NAME=rusty_db

Then, we must start the database and apply all migrations.

make start_db 
make prepare_db

We can then start the service with the following command:

cargo run

We will be able to start sending HTTP requests to the service using this format:

curl -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{"name": "channel name", "description": "test channel"}' http://127.0.0.1:8080/channel

Directory Structure

• src/adapters: Adapters and repository classes.
• src/domain: Domain model.
• src/service_layer: Service layer.
• src/lib.rs: REST API.
• src/main.rs: The entry point to launch the app.

Development

rusty is a pet project to learn Rust; thus, I do not expect external contributions. Yet, if you want to help, please respect this naming convention to tag your commits:

• API relevant changes:
  • feat: Commits that add a new feature
  • fix: Commits that fixes a bug
• refactor: Commits that rewrite/restructure your code but does not change any behavior
  • perf: Special refactor commits that improve performance
• style: Commits that do not affect the meaning (white space, formatting, missing semi-colons, etc.)
• test: Commits that add missing tests or correct existing tests
• docs: Commits that affect documentation only
• build: Commits that affect build components like build tool, CI pipeline, dependencies, project version, etc...
• ops: Commits that affect operational components like infrastructure, deployment, backup, recovery, ...
• chore: Miscellaneous commits e.g., modifying .gitignore

Before we start, we must install diesel_cli to help manage the project. If you're using Ubuntu, you can do that by running the following command:

make install_diesel_cli

Then, we must start the app database and apply all migrations to get the database to the desired state.

make start_db 
make prepare_db

We should now be able to run unit and integration tests.

make test

To stop the service, we can stop the Docker container running Postgres.

make stop_db

There are other helper commands in the makefile file that can be useful while contributing to this project.

Tools

• Docker
• Cargo
• Diesel
• PostgreSQL
• Actix Web