Unlocking the Power of Rust: Building a To-Do App with Perseus
Rust, a system programming language known for its robust memory safety features and exceptional performance, has evolved beyond its original scope. Today, Rust is used in various app platforms, mobile apps, and web apps, thanks to frameworks like Rocket, Axum, and Actix. The rise of reactive web frameworks with server-side rendering (SSR) has led to the development of alternatives that leverage the safety and performance of both Rust and WebAssembly. One such framework is Perseus, a fast frontend web development framework for Rust with built-in support for reactivity using Sycamore, server-side rendering, and more.
Building a To-Do App with Perseus
In this article, we’ll explore how to build a Rust web application with Perseus and deploy it to a server. Our project will be a to-do application that allows users to add and delete tasks. To follow along, you should have a basic understanding of Rust and have Rust installed on your computer.
Setting Up the Perseus Environment
Before building our Rust application with Perseus, we need to set up our environment. This involves installing the Perseus command-line interface (CLI) and initializing our Perseus app. We’ll walk through the installation process step by step.
Exploring the Perseus App Structure
Once our app setup is complete, let’s tour the app structure we just created. Our app structure will consist of a src directory containing a main.rs file, which is the natural main entry point of the app. The main.rs file contains a single function, the main function, which returns a PerseusApp.
App Templates with Perseus
In a Perseus application, the template directory is where all our app views are located by default. Each file in the template directory represents a page and returns a Perseus template. We’ll create a template for the homepage (or index) of our web app and assign the index_page (a view function) as the view we want to display.
Defining Perseus State
In a Perseus application, a “state” refers to the data that a view or template depends on to render correctly. We’ll define a TodoListState struct, which will serve as a data store for all the todos we’ll create. This state will comprise different data types defined in a struct, and it’s crucial to the reactivity of the app as the application updates each time there is a change in the state.
Creating a To-Do Form
We’ll create a to-do form that allows users to add new tasks to the list. We’ll use the view! macro to return the view that will be rendered. In the view, we’ll pass an h1 element with its contents in the curly braces.
Adding a New Task to the To-Do List
Now that we have a form to create a to-do, let’s add the to-do to the list of to-dos in the state. We’ll create a view that adds an item to the list of to-dos. When the form is submitted, it adds the new to-do to the list and clears the input field.
Editing Our To-Do List Functionality
We’ll add the ability to delete to-dos from the list. We’ll create a view function that takes in the state of the to-do list and generates a dynamic, interactive HTML list of to-do items. Each item comes with a button that allows for the removal of the item from the list.
Adding a List View to Our To-Do App
We’ll take all the views we’ve created and put them together in a todo_list_view view function. Finally, we can add the todo_list_view to the main template that we’ll pass to the Perseus app.
Deploying Your Perseus App
Deploying a Perseus app is easy and straightforward. We just need to run the command perseus deploy, and wait for a couple of minutes. After the build process is complete, we can deploy the build to any server.
By following these steps, we’ve successfully built a to-do app with Perseus and deployed it to a server. With Perseus, we can create fast, reactive, and safe web applications with Rust.