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Something I've been wondering is whether a Rust-embedded language has a place for making the "glue API server"-writing experience better. Rocket is an amazing l

Something I've been wondering is whether a Rust-embedded language has a place for making the "glue API server"-writing experience better. Rocket is an amazing library, but Rust's strictness - much as I love it - still slows down the iteration phase quite a bit. Imagine being able to hack out an API, twiddling JSON and reshaping data, in something like Passerine, and then step the different pieces down to Rust code as they solidify

smt88 6y ago
You can hack out an API in Open API Spec (I recommend Stoplight as a GUI for that) and then stand it up as a mock server for initial UI dev. If the language has a code generator written for it, you can then generate method stubs and types for your server. If not, you can still use your spec as a validation document that you feed into a library before responding to a request.
- brundolf 6y ago
  That's not really what I mean... I mean that throwing together an API, even one with a bit of business logic, is still nontrivially easier in Flask than it is in Rocket (despite Rocket being the gold-standard for this in the Rust world). If we really want the Rust ecosystem to compete with, say, Go when it comes to regular web APIs, I think we're going to need more than just a framework. An embedded scripting language could be the ticket
slightknack 6y ago
I'm currently thinking of ways to make macros that serialize Rust structs to Passerine values (and vice-versa) a la serde. I think being able to hack out an API in a high-level language and then tossing it down to something like Rust for the low-level perf gains is a great idea. Furthermore, I'd like for this to be possible: - project |- Aspen.toml |- src ||- ... passerine code |- ffi ||- ... rust code Where Passerine could just wrap and call the Rust code automagically. This is still a ways off though...
- brundolf 6y ago
  Sounds awesome! You've done great work already, I can't wait to see where it goes from here :)

smt88 6y ago

You can hack out an API in Open API Spec (I recommend Stoplight as a GUI for that) and then stand it up as a mock server for initial UI dev. If the language has a code generator written for it, you can then generate method stubs and types for your server. If not, you can still use your spec as a validation document that you feed into a library before responding to a request.

brundolf 6y ago
That's not really what I mean... I mean that throwing together an API, even one with a bit of business logic, is still nontrivially easier in Flask than it is in Rocket (despite Rocket being the gold-standard for this in the Rust world). If we really want the Rust ecosystem to compete with, say, Go when it comes to regular web APIs, I think we're going to need more than just a framework. An embedded scripting language could be the ticket

slightknack 6y ago

I'm currently thinking of ways to make macros that serialize Rust structs to Passerine values (and vice-versa) a la serde. I think being able to hack out an API in a high-level language and then tossing it down to something like Rust for the low-level perf gains is a great idea. Furthermore, I'd like for this to be possible: - project |- Aspen.toml |- src ||- ... passerine code |- ffi ||- ... rust code Where Passerine could just wrap and call the Rust code automagically. This is still a ways off though...

brundolf 6y ago
Sounds awesome! You've done great work already, I can't wait to see where it goes from here :)