Rust Web Programming: A hands-on guide to developing fast and secure web apps with the Rust programming language

All right, diving into Rust for web development.

That's a that's a great choice.

It's known for its speed and security, right yeah. Yeah, And to help us kind of break it all down, we have excerpts from Rust Web Programming, a hands on guide Excellent. I'm excited to unpack this. It's a good one, I think so. Yeah, So Rust is gaining traction, it is. It is, especially for those high performance web apps for sure.

For sure, it kind of.

Bridges the gap, you know, between that low level control and high level abstraction. Absolutely, so it seems like this book is a perfect starting point.

I think so too, especially for.

Those who may have some background and web development already.

Yeah, if you've got HTML, CSS, JavaScript out of your belt, you're you're going to be in a good spot.

Like the usual suspects for sure. But it also delves into deploying on AWS, yeah, which I think is a major win absolutely for practical experience.

You gotta get that real world story. Yeah.

So there's a lot to unpack, there is, But we can't forget about those core Rust concepts like.

Yeah, like data types, memory management, or handling, right, and these can be stumbling blocks, especially if you're coming from a language like Python or JavaScript. Oh for sure, you know where things are maybe a little bit.

Looser, yeah, a little more forgiving exactly. So how Rust handles things differently is one of the first things that grab my attention. Okay, strong typing. This concept of ownership of variables and memory management without a garbage collector, right, that's a lot to process.

It is, It is a lot to process, and that's that's what makes us so unique. This, this ownership system in particular, is key to Rust's memory safety. Okay, without needing that garbage collector. Interesting, Yeah, so think of it this way. Every piece of data in Rust has a designated owner, and when that owner is no longer needed, the data is automatically cleaned up. No more memory leaks or those pesky dangling pointers.

It's like having a built in cleanup crew your code.

That's a great way to put it.

Always making sure things are tidy, yeah and efficient.

Keep everything nice and clean.

But how does that play out in a real world scenario?

Okay, so let's take strings as an example. On page sixteen, the book shows how a string is created and assigned to a variable, making that variable the owner. Then if you pass that string to a function, ownership is transferred. You're essentially handing over responsibility, gotcha, for that piece of data. And this prevents situations where multiple parts of your code might try to modify the same data simultaneously.

Which would cause chaos.

Yeah, it can lead to all sorts of problems.

So it's like having a clear chain of command for your data absolutely, so everyone knows who's in charge exactly.

And it's visually represented in that diagram on page sixteen showing the strings relationship to strains, So it really helps to see it laid out like that.

Definitely, now onto something that always makes me a bit nervous, error handling.

Oh yeah.

It seems that Rust takes a very unique approach, as it does with these things called options and results. Oh right, It kind of sounds a little intimidating.

They do. They do sound a little intimidating at first, but options and results are Rust's way of forcing you to confront those potential errors head on, okay, like, really think about what could go wrong, gotcha. The book uses a great example on page ten with a hash mat. Okay, when you try to retrieve a value using a key that the key might not exist and So instead of just like returning the value, which could lead to unexpected crashes, Rust returns an option.

So it's like Rust is saying, hey, be prepared, Yeah, this might not work out as plans, exactly.

It's a bit more upfront than other.

Languages that kind of let you get away with ignoring those potential errors.

Right. In those other languages, you can just kind of like cross your fingers and hope for the best.

Yeah, hope it works.

But Rust is like, nope, let's deal with this right now.

Yeah, let's be explicit.

Yeah.

So that option acts like a container. It either holds the value you're looking for, or it indicates that it's empty, exact, and you have to explicitly check and unwrap it to access that value.

Yep, And that prevents those nasty runtime surprises.

So you're not getting this, like you said.

Crashes exactly, No, no crashes.

Later on down the line, I'm starting to see how this emphasis on explicit error handling can lead to more robust code in the long run.

Absolutely, it's like building a safety net, yeah, into your program from the ground up.

Okay, great, now onto structs and treats. I have to admit those names sound a little intimidating a little bit.

Yeah they sound a little scary, yeah, but they're actually pretty straightforward.

Okay.

So think of structs as blueprints, okay for your data. They let you define the structure of the information you're working with.

Gotcha.

Traits, on the other hand, are like contracts.

Okay.

They define be behavior that different structs can share.

So if you have a struct that represents a user, okay, you can have a trait that defines how to authenticate that user right exactly, okay, and any other struct that wants to handle authentication would need to implement that trait exactly.

Yeah. And that's how you ensure consistency, yeah, across your code.

Gotcha.

So the book illustrates this concept nicely on pages twenty eight, thirty and fifty one with the coordinates struct and traits like get to delete and edit. Cool, and it shows you how you can add specific functionality to a struck, making your code more modular and easier to maintain.

So it's about those building blocks, creating those reusable components that you can mix and match to create more complex functionality.

Exactly.

Awesome. So, speaking of toolboxes, okay, we can't forget about Cargo.

Of course not. Cargo's the best rusts.

Build system and package manager.

Right.

It's like having a personal assistant for your rest projects. Yeah, it seems like Cargo handles everything. It pretty much does, from managing dependencies, building your code, running tests, generating documentation.

It's like the Swiss army knife.

It is a Swiss army knife.

Of Rust develops.

You don't have to manually download and install libraries, worry about compatibility issues, any of that headache inducing stuff.

None of that.

Cargo just handles it all for you.

Yep, it just takes care of it.

Now, let's move on to web frameworks. Okay, the book focuses on Actics Web, known for its speed.

It is blazing fast.

What makes it so fast, so.

Actis Web leverages Rust's asynchronous capabilities. It uses async programming, which essentially allows your web app to juggle multiple tasks concurrently without getting bogged down by waiting. Think of it like a chef who can prep ingredients for one dish while another is simmering on the stove.

So instead of waiting for one task to finish before moving on to the next, exactly, it can keep things moving.

Yep, keep everything flow and smoothly.

Making it much more efficient and responsive.

It's all about that efficiency.

So Rust has built in support for this asynchronous programming it does, which Actic's Web expertly uses right out of the box. The book breaks down the structure of an Actic's web app on page eighty six, Yeah, showing how views are modularized for different functionalities like authentication or handling specific data items.

Yeah, it's all about keeping your code nice and organized.

Yeah, it's all about organization and keeping your code clean exactly. And then we have routes which we see defined on pages ninety eight and one oh two. Yeah, and these are like the signposts of your web app.

Yeah, think like the roadmap for your application.

So they direct incoming requests to the appropriate views based.

On the URL exactly. So somebody goes to you know, slash log in, yeah, it knows to send them to the log in view. Perfect, things like that.

Speaking of data, I see that actics Web uses Jason extensively for communication.

Jason is the language of the web. It is, it is, it really is.

But luckily there's Sarday.

Yes, Sauraday is a life saver.

To simplify that whole process.

Makes it so easy.

Saraday effortlessly converts Rust data structures into JSON format for sending over the network, and seamlessly converts incoming Jason back into Rust.

Structs, right back into those nice, neat data structures.

The book showcases this beautifully on page one oh five, where a j request is handled and the response is sent back as Jason data, all beautifully structured using a Toto item struct defined on page one ten.

It's a great example.

Yeah, I think so too. So Rust combines power with elegance. You get the control and safety of RUSS with the convenience and readability of well structured code.

And that's what we all want, right we do. We want our code to be readable and understandable.

So far we've explored how Rust hands data, yeah, manages memory structures web apps. Right, it's a lot to take in, but it's pretty impressive.

It is. It is very impressive.

So what's next on a Rust adventure?

Well, no web app is complete without data persistence, right, We need a way to store information beyond those temporary JSON files. So for that we have diesel therm for Rust.

All right, let's dive into that in part two. That's good So, dear listener, take a moment to digest all this amazing Rust knowledge.

There's a lot to unpack.

There is. We'll be right back with part two.

Yeah, looking forward to it.

To explore diesel and other fascinating aspects of Rust web development. See you soon, Welcome back. Last time, we got a glimpse of how Rust approaches you know, memory management and error handling.

It's a different way of thinking, but I'm starting to appreciate how it leads to more robust code.

Oh yeah, for sure. Yeah, but let's dive back into the book and see how those concepts play out in web development.

So good.

I'm particularly interested in those closures mentioned in the chapter on handling HTTP requests? What exactly are they?

So? Closures are essentially anonymous functions that have this needability to capture variables from their surrounding environment.

Do they have a memory?

Yeah, they kind of have a memory. They hold on to information from the context in which they were created.

Okay, that sounds intriguing, but how does that translate to building web servers?

So think about how you define routes in a web framework. You're essentially mapping URLs to specific code that handles those requests. Closures provide this really concise and flexible way to do this. Remember that httpserver dot new function in aactics web.

Yeah, that's where you create the web server exactly.

You pass a closure to that function, and that closure defines the applications logic.

So the closure acts like the brain of the web server.

Yeah, that's a great way to put.

It, decide what to do with each incoming request.

Yeah, it's like the control center okay. And because closures can capture variables from their surroundings, they can access things like database connections or configuration settings okay, that are defined outside the closer itself.

So it's like having everything the server needs readily available.

Exactly. It's all right there at its fingertips.

It seems like closures bring a lot of organization and efficiency to the table.

They really do, they really do.

But web development also often involves a lot of asynchronous programming.

Oh yeah, it's essential these days.

Which I'm still trying to wrap my head around.

It can be a little mind bending, it can, but once you get it, it's really powerful.

Okay.

So a secretist programming is all about making your applications more responsive and efficient. Okay, It allows a program to work on other things while it's waiting for something like a network request to complete.

Gotcha. So instead of just sitting idle, right, instead of.

Just blocking and waiting, it can go do other things. It can multitask exactly, get multitask.

Making better use of resources and time.

Yeah, it's all about maximizing efficiency.

So instead of waiting for like a database query to finish before moving on exactly, the server can handle other requests.

Yep, keep things moving.

It's like a well coordinated dance.

That's a great way to put it.

So Rust has this built in support. It does it for asynchronous programming, which acticx web expertly uses.

Yeah, it just takes full advantage of it.

The book does a good job of breaking down the core concepts of asinc in Rust. Okay, like the async and awaight keywords.

Right, those are the key players.

And it even explores different ways to run these asynchronous tasks concurrently using the futures crate.

Yeah, the Future's crate is essential for working with asink and Rust.

Okay. So now let's shift gears a bit and talk about managing the different views within our web app.

Right, sounds good?

You know, things like a home page, a log in page, a user.

Profile, all the different sections.

How does rust approach that?

So Actic's Web encourages modularity by organizing views into separate modules.

So it's all about organization.

Yeah, keeping things tidy as our application grows, right, because things can get messy quickly, they can if you're not careful.

So the book takes that a step further, okay, and introduces this concept of view factories.

Oh yeah. View factories are great.

Functions dedicated to configuring and registering your views within the web application.

Yeah. It's a nice way to centralize things.

So instead of scattering route definitions throughout our code, exactly, have this centralized.

Place yep, one place to rule them all.

I like that.

It definitely makes things easier to manage.

So these view factories can be as simple or as complex as you need them to be.

You can tailor them to your specific needs.

The book provides a clear example on page eighty seven, okay, where a view factory is defined for the auth routs.

All right, so that's handling all your authentic stuff.

It's fascinating how they use the path struct to define the base URL and then register each individual view using the service config struct.

Yeah, it's very elegant solution.

That's very structured and elegant.

Yeah. Rust is all about that elegance.

Okay, So let's switch gears again and talk about data handling.

All right, data data data.

They've already seen how handles Jason.

Right, surday is the Jason Master.

But what about extracting data, okay from incoming requests and sending data back to the client.

So that's that that communication back and forth between the client and server.

So rust has an elegant solution for this as well. Of course it does using structs and trades.

Structs and traits to the rescue.

They really are the backbone of rest. We really are providing this amazing flexibility and organization.

All about structure, it is.

So let's imagine you have a form on your website for users to enter their name and email address Classic contact form, act contact form.

Yeah, you would define as struct in rusty to represent that data with fields for name and email.

Yep, make a nice little struct.

And then in your Arctic's WebView you specify that you expect this struct as the request body. Gotcha, and Actics automatically takes care of de serializing the incoming Jason data into that struct.

It just handles it for you, So no.

More manual parsing, potential errors.

It's all taken care of.

Pactics, just hands you the data.

Yep, nice and neat.

Neatly packaged and ready to use, ready to go. And sending data back to the client follows a similar approach pretty much.

Yeah, you can take a restruct, serialize it into Jason using SORDE, and send it back.

As the response. So again, it's about making that data exchange smooth and effortless.

Exactly, it should be a seamless process.

It's amazing how Rust manages to make even complex tasks yeah, feel so streamlined and elegant.

It's a beautiful language.

But there's one crucial aspect we haven't touched upon yet.

Security.

Oh yeah, we can't forget about security.

How do we ensure our web applications are protected from those malicious attacks?

So security is paramount and Rust lays a really strong foundation for building secure applications. But we can't just rely on the language alone. We need to be mindful of common vulnerabilities and take steps to mitigate them.

So the book covers several security considerations from guarding against cross site scripting EXSS attacks to implementing proper authentication and authorization mechanisms.

Yeah, all the important stuff.

So it's a combination of leveraging Rust's strengths and following those best practices for secure coding.

Yeah, you gotta have both.

So let's start with croft site scripting or EXSS. Right, it's a common attack where malicious code is injected into a web page that other users.

Yep, so it's like a way to sneak in code.

Imagine a comment section on a blog, Okay, where users can submit their HTML.

Oh yeah, that's a classic example.

If an attacker manages to inject a malicious script, they could potentially steal user data or hijack accounts, all sorts of bad things. So that's why sanitizing user input is so crucial.

It is absolutely crucial. You can't trust anything that comes from the user.

Especially when dealing with HTML.

Yeah, especially EACHTML, because that's where a lot of these attacks happen.

The book offers best practices for escaping special characters and ensuring that users submitted content is displayed safely.

Right, So you're essentially neutralizing any potentially harmful code.

It's about treating all incoming data with a healthy dose of suspicion.

Exactly, trust no one.

Now let's talk about authentication and authorization. Okay, we briefly mentioned JWT's and password hashing earlier.

Right, those are our security heroes, but how do.

We actually implement those in our rust web app.

So jbt's and password hashing are key components of a secure authentication system, and the book provides a great walkthrough on how to implement them, starting with defining a user model. Okay, much like the to do item model.

Right, so we're creating those rust strucks again exactly.

We love our structure that mirror.

The structure of our data, this time representing a user in our system.

Right, so you'd have feels for things like username, email address, and of course the password.

Okay, but with passwords we have to be extra careful. Right.

Oh yeah, passwords are super sensitive.

Storing them in plaintext is a big no no.

Absolutely, you never want to store passwords in plain text.

It's like leaving the keys to the kingdom out in the open.

Yeah, it's just asking for trouble.

So that's where password hashing comes into play.

Password hashing to the rescue.

Instead of storing the actual password, right, we use a special function to transform it into a scrambled, unreadable format.

Exactly. It's like turning it into gibberish.

The book suggests using the b crypt crate for this, okay, and provides an example on page one seventy.

B crypt is a good choice. It's a very strong hashing algorithm.

Okay. So even if someone gets their hands on those hashed passwords, they're essentially useless pretty much.

Yeah. Yeah, it's extremely difficult to reverse that process.

It's like trying to solve the complex puzzle without all.

The pieces, exactly. It's a very difficult puzzle.

Okay. So we've hashed and stored those passwords securely.

All right, so far, so good.

What happens when a user tries to log in?

So, when a user tries to log in, we take the password they enter, okay, hash it using the same algorithm and compare the resulting hash to the one store in the database.

So we're not comparing the actual.

Passwords, No, we're comparing the hashes.

Right, we're comparing the gibberius exactly, and if the hash is match, we know they entered the correct password okay, and if everything checks out all right.

If they pass the test, we issue them a JA ANDBA Jason web tooken act like a digital passport containing information about the user in their session. This token is then sent back to the client, who usually stores it in their browser okay and presents it with each subsequent request.

So it's like they're carrying their identification with them as they navigate the application.

Is their ticket to ride it.

On the server side, we have middleware checking those JWTs, acting like security guards.

Making sure everything's legit, ensuring.

That only authorized users can access certain areas.

Exactly. It's all about control access.

And if the JWT is invalid.

Or missing right, then we deny access.

We deny the request and send back an.

Error exactly, you shall not pass.

So it's a multi layered approach to security.

It is.

It is using different tools and techniques to protect our application and its users.

You got to keep everyone safe.

We've covered a lot of ground here. We have from closures and asynchronous programming to security and data handling all the important stuff. What other gems are hidden?

Oh, there are plenty more gems.

Within this world of rust Web development.

Rust is full of surprises.

So the book touches on logging, okay, a crucial aspect of monitoring and debugging web applications.

Logging is essential.

You gotta know what's going on, especially when building RESTful.

Services, especially in production, when things go wrong.

When things go wrong, you need to know why. So logging it's like having a detailed record.

Yes, it's like a history book of.

Everything that's happening within our application.

Exactly, so you can go back and see what happened.

The book introduces some popular Rust logging libraries, like what like log in on vlogger. Those are good ones, making it super easy to integrate logging into our applications.

Yeah, they make it really straightforward.

But there's one more crucial piece of the puzzle okay, deployment.

Ah, yes, deployment the final frontier.

How do we actually get our rust web application out into the world.

Out into the wild for others to use. So the book uses AWS as an example. Deploying to an easy two instance using Docker.

Docker, our trusty friend.

Docker is a lifesaver.

It's like packaging your application and all its dependencies into this neat little container that can run anywhere exactly.

It's like a little self contained.

World regardless of the underlying operating system. Yep, it's platform agnostic and AWSC two provides those virtual servers in the cloud ready to host our containerized applications.

Yeah, it's a match made in heaven.

But how do we get our Docker image from our computer to the cloud.

So that's where services like Docker Hub come in, which act as a registry where you can store and share your Docker images.

So you build your image locally, push it to Docker Hub, and then your server on AWS can easily pull it down and run it.

Yeah, it's a very streamline process.

We've covered so much ground in this deep.

Dive we have. It's been a whirlwind, from.

The fundamentals of RUSS to handling requests, securing our app and even deploying it to the cloud.

The whole nine yards just mind boggling. It is a lot to take.

In, but we've only scratched the surface.

Oh yeah, just the tip of the iceberg.

Of what's possible with Rust web development.

Rust is an incredibly powerful language.

So what other adventures await us?

Oh, there's always more to explore, and.

What exciting new concepts will we uncover?

I guess you'll have to stay tuned to find out.

So, dear listener, take a break, Yeah, grab a coffee or something. Let all this information sink in. There's a lot to process, and we'll be back with Part three.

Looking forward to it to.

Dive into even more fascinating aspects of Rust.

I see you soon.

Welcome back to our rest journey. We've covered so much already, like how Rust handles data, manages memory, and even secures our web applications.

It's been quite the adventure it has.

Now I'm really eager to dive into the practical side of things, like interacting with databases and building those powerful, RESTful APIs.

You're in for a tree database interaction is a cornerstone it is of most web applications, and thankfully Rust has a really powerful tool for that. Diesel the orm we briefly touched on before.

Yeah, Diesel lets us communicate with our Postgres school database using nice, clean, type safe rest code.

It's a beautiful thing.

I'm excited to see it in action.

Yeah, me too.

So the book provides a fantastic step by step guide on using diesels, starting with setting up our development environment using.

Docker ah Docker our trusty friends.

Our trusty friend for creating those isolated environments.

Right. It keeps everything nice and contained.

It's like having a mini virtual machine dedicated to our database, keeping things organized and preventing conflicts with other software on our system.

Exactly. It's like its own little sandbox.

So docer makes setting up and managing these environments a breeze.

Oh yeah, it takes all the headache out of it.

The book then guides you through defining our database schemakay using Diesel's migration system.

Ah. Migration's very import.

Like version control for our database. Right.

Yeah, that's a great way to think about it.

So they allow us to track changes, roll back to previous versions if made, and keep everything organized.

It makes collaboration so much easier, I bet, yeah, because everybody can be working on their own migrations and then you just apply them in order and it all works out.

So Diesel makes this process very smooth, it does it? Does You create these migration files that describe the changes you want to make to your database, and Diesel takes care of applying them in the correct order.

Yeah. It even has a command line tool does it to simplify running those migrations.

So it's like a one stop shop pretty much. Yeah, I'm looking at an example on page one fifty six. It seems pretty straightforward.

Yeah, it's very intuitive.

You define the migration file and inside you write SQL statements to create or modify tables.

So it's still SQL under the hood. It is, but Diesel just gives you a nice way to manage it.

And the beauty of it is that Diesel ensures that those migrations are applied in correct sequence, preventing any inconsistencies or conflicts that could arise from out of order changes.

It's like a safety net for your database.

It takes a lot of the headache out of database management, oh for sure.

For sure.

Okay, so we've defined our schema, we've run our migrations.

Now we need to create some Rust models, okay that represent those database tables.

So these models are like the bridge between our RUST code and the database, right.

Yeah, they're the intermediaria.

Making interacting with data types safe and easy to manage, and they.

Keep our code nice and clean.

So we're essentially creating Rust structs.

We love our structure.

That mirror the structure of our table exactly.

Each field in the struct corresponds to a column in the database table.

I love how Rust encourages us to think about these data structures and types.

It makes the code so much more explicit and readable.

It really does.

Yeah, and Diesel leverages this to its advantage. It makes working with databases in Rust a really enjoyable experience.

I bet so. No more wrestling with raw SQL queries.

No more raw sequel unless you really want.

It, unless you really want to.

But Diesel can handle most things for you.

I'm looking at this example on page one sixty one. Okay, where they define a model for a to do item.

Right, the trustee to do list.

They're using this table macro, which seems to be doing all the heavy lifting of mapping that's stretched to the database table.

Yeah. That macro is a lifesaver.

Taking care of all that boilerplate code for you.

Exactly. It just does all the work behind the scenes.

Okay, so we've got our model set up, right, how do we actually use them to interact with the database.

So Diesel provides this really expressive query builder that allows you to write database queries in this really type safe way.

So we're not just throwing raw SEQL queries at the database, no, no, no, and hoping for the best.

Diesels are there to guide us and make sure we're doing things correctly.

I see an example on page one sixty eight where they're using diesel to fetch all the to do items from the database. It's an interesting blend of that sequel like syntax with those Rust function calls.

Yeah, it's a nice fusion of the two worlds. Is so you get the familiarity of sequel, but with the type safety of Rust.

This is fantastic. So we can build these sophisticated database interactions all within the safety and structure of RUSS exactly. But what about user authentication?

Ah? Yes, security.

We talked about jbts and password hashing.

Earlier, right, our security heroes.

How do we put those into practice?

Okay, so user authentication is crucial for any application it is that handles sensitive data. Yeah, and the book does not disappoint. I bet it provides a really detailed guide on implementing authentication using jtabts and password hashing. And it starts by defining a user model. Okay, much like we did with our to do item model.

So again we're creating those Rust strucks that mirror the structure of our data. We love our structs, this time representing a user in our system.

Right, so we'll have fields for username, email address, and the all important password.

But here's where we have to be extra careful, right, Oh.

Yeah, extra careful with passwords.

Storing them in plaintext is a huge security risk.

Absolutely, never store passwords in plain text.

It's like leaving the keys to the Kingdom out in the open.

Yeah, it's just asking for trouble.

So that's where password hashing comes in to save the day.

Password hashing to the rescue.

Instead of storing the actual password, we use a special function to transform it into a scrambled, unreadable format.

We turn it into gobbledygook.

The book suggests using the b crypt create okay and provides an example on page one seventy nine.

B crypt is a good choice. It's a very strong hashing algorithm.

So even if someone gets their hands on those hashed passwords, they're essentially useless.

Yeah, it's extremely difficult to reverse that hashing process.

Okay, So when a user tries to log in, we take the password they enter, right, hash it using the same algorithm, and compare the resulting hash to the ones in the database Exactly, we're comparing the gobbledygook, and if the hashes match, we know they've entered the correct password.

That's how we know they're who they say they are.

And if everything checks out, what happens then?

Okay? So if the credentials are valid, we generate a JWT that Jason webtok.

Can we talked about before, the digital passport.

Right, it's their ticket to ride.

Containing information about the user and their session exactly. Okay, So we send this token back to the client, who typically stores it in their browser and includes it in each subsequent request.

Right, It's like their badge of authentication.

So on the server side, we need middleware right that intercepts those requests, verifies the JWT, and only allows the request to proceed if everything checks out.

Yeah, the middleware is like the bouncer at the club checking IDs, making sure everyone's got the right credentials.

And if the JWT is invalid or missing, boot them out. We deny the request and send back an ERA.

You shall not pass.

It's all about adding those layers of protection to ensure that only authorized users can access specific resources or perform certain actions within our application.

Security is a never ending battle it is, but rust gives us the tools to fight it effectively.

Now that we have user authentication in place, are we ready to build those APIs we've been talking about.

Let's do APIs or the backbone of the modern web?

They are?

Yeah.

So RESTful APIs are a way to structure our web services to make them easily accessible and usable by other applications, right.

Exactly, think mobile apps, third party integrations, all sorts of things.

The book focuses on using actis web to build RESTful APIs.

Good choice.

Actics is great for that it is, and it highlights these important concepts like statelessness, caching, and of course logging all the essentials. So statelessness means that each request is independent, right.

Right, Each request is treated in isolation.

Making it easier to handle a large number of requests concurrently.

Exactly, it's all about scalability.

Caching helps boost performance by storing frequently accessed.

Data right, so we don't have to hit the data every.

Time, reducing the load on our servers.

Ye, keep those servers happy.

And logging provides those valuable insights into what's happening within our API.

Right, It's like having a window into your application.

Helping us track down those issues and monitor performance.

Gotta love logs.

The book even touches on techniques like code on demand, which sounds pretty powerful.

Code on demand is really interesting, it is. Yeah, it lets you send code from the server to the client okay, to be executed.

Interesting.

Yeah, it can be really powerful, Okay, but it also comes with some security risks.

So you got to be careful.

Oh yeah, definitely.

Okay, So let's talk about.

Testing, okay, testing one, two, three.

We build all this amazing functionality, but how do we actually ensure that it works as expected?

Testing is crucial. Yeah, you got to make sure your code actually does what you think it does.

So Rust has excellent support for both unit testing right where you test individual components in isolation.

Ye break it down into smaller pieces.

And functional testing okay, where you test the application.

As a whole, so testing the whole system from end to end.

The book dedicates an entire chapter to testing that important. It walks through unit testing individual modules using Rust's built in testing framework, and then it dives into functional testing using tools like Postman and Newman.

Ah, Postman and Newman great tools for API testing, So Postman is a popular tool for testing APIs. Yeah, it's like the industry standard.

It allows you to create collections of requests, define assertions to verify the responses, and even automate the execution of those tests.

Yeah. You can even run those tests for the command line using nimen oh wow, which is great for continuous integration and delivery.

So you can essentially automate the testing of your entire API pretty much. Yeah, ensuring that everything keeps working as you continue to develop and add new features.

It's all about automation.

That's incredibly powerful. It is, so it takes a lot of that manual effort and guesswork out of testing.

Yeah. It frees you up to focus on the fun stuff, right.

And it allows us to catch those errors early and keep our application stable and reliable as it grows.

Exactly.

Wow. Rust truly seems to.

Have it all. It does it does from powerful.

Language features and robust libraries to comprehensive tooling and a strong emphasis on testing.

It's the whole package.

It feels like it was designed with the developers in mind.

It was. It was definitely built by developers for developers.

So to our listeners, we hope this deep dive has sparked your own curiosity about Rust.

Yeah, go out there and give it a try.

It's a language that's reshaping the landscape of web development. It really is, and we can't wait to see what incredible things you create with it.

Yeah, the possibilities are endless.

Until next time, Happy coding, Happy coding.