---
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).