From 471588c0e0a9db4ccc9065b9bc16b72abe0f51a0 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Christine Dodrill <me@christine.website>
Date: Thu, 16 Jul 2020 14:14:51 -0400
Subject: [PATCH] blog: add rewrite in rust post

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+---
+title: "Site Update: Rewrite in Rust"
+date: 2020-07-16
+tags:
+ - rust
+---
+
+# Site Update: Rewrite in Rust
+
+Hello there! You are reading this post thanks to a lot of effort, research and
+consultation that has resulted in a complete from-scratch rewrite of this
+website in [Rust](https://rust-lang.org). The original implementation in Go is
+available [here](https://github.com/Xe/site/releases/tag/v1.5.0) should anyone
+want to reference that for any reason.
+
+If you find any issues with the [RSS feed](/blog.rss), [Atom feed](/blog.atom)
+or [JSONFeed](/blog.json), please let me know as soon as possible so I can fix
+them.
+
+This website stands on the shoulder of giants. Here are just a few of those and
+how they add up into this whole package.
+
+## comrak
+
+All of my posts are written in
+[markdown](https://github.com/Xe/site/blob/master/blog/all-there-is-is-now-2019-05-25.markdown).
+[comrak](https://github.com/kivikakk/comrak) is a markdown parser written by a
+friend of mine that is as fast and as correct as possible. comrak does the job
+of turning all of that markdown (over 150 files at the time of writing this
+post) into the HTML that you are reading right now. It also supports a lot of
+common markdown extensions, which I use heavily in my posts.
+
+## warp
+
+[warp](https://github.com/seanmonstar/warp) is the web framework I use for Rust.
+It gives users a set of filters that add up into entire web applications. For an
+example, see this example from its readme:
+
+```rust
+use warp::Filter;
+
+#[tokio::main]
+async fn main() {
+    // GET /hello/warp => 200 OK with body "Hello, warp!"
+    let hello = warp::path!("hello" / String)
+        .map(|name| format!("Hello, {}!", name));
+
+    warp::serve(hello)
+        .run(([127, 0, 0, 1], 3030))
+        .await;
+}
+```
+
+This can then be built up into something like this:
+
+```rust
+let site = index
+    .or(contact.or(feeds).or(resume.or(signalboost)).or(patrons))
+    .or(blog_index.or(series.or(series_view).or(post_view)))
+    .or(gallery_index.or(gallery_post_view))
+    .or(talk_index.or(talk_post_view))
+    .or(jsonfeed.or(atom).or(rss.or(sitemap)))
+    .or(files.or(css).or(favicon).or(sw.or(robots)))
+    .or(healthcheck.or(metrics_endpoint).or(go_vanity_jsonfeed))
+    // ...
+```
+
+which is the actual routing setup for this website!
+
+## ructe
+
+In the previous version of this site, I used Go's
+[html/template](https://godoc.org/html/template). Rust does not have an
+equivalent of html/template in its standard library. After some research, I
+settled on [ructe](https://github.com/kaj/ructe) for the HTML templates. ructe
+works by preprocessing templates using a little domain-specific language that
+compiles down to Rust source code. This makes the templates become optimized
+with the rest of the program and enables my website to render most pages in less
+than 100 microseconds. Here is an example template (the one for
+[/patrons](/patrons)):
+
+```html
+@use patreon::Users;
+@use super::{header_html, footer_html};
+
+@(users: Users)
+
+@:header_html(Some("Patrons"), None)
+
+<h1>Patrons</h1>
+
+<p>These awesome people donate to me on <a href="https://patreon.com/cadey">Patreon</a>.
+If you would like to show up in this list, please donate to me on Patreon. This
+is refreshed every time the site is deployed.</p>
+
+<p>
+    <ul>
+        @for user in users {
+            <li>@user.attributes.full_name</li>
+        }
+    </ul>
+</p>
+
+@:footer_html()
+```
+
+The templates compile down to Rust, which lets me include other parts of the
+program into the templates. Here I use that to take a list of users from the
+incredibly hacky Patreon API client I wrote for this website and iterate over
+it, making a list of every patron by name.
+
+---
+
+These are the biggest giants that my website now sits on. The code for this
+rewrite is still a bit messy. I'm working on making it better, but my goal is to
+have this website's code shine as an example of how to best write this kind of
+website in Rust. Check out the code [here](https://github.com/Xe/site).