Developing a RESTful Web Service in Rust with JetBrains Tools and a Rust Client

The development of web applications and web services has seen significant growth in recent years, providing an excellent means to share data and functionality over the internet. Rust has emerged as a popular choice for building secure and high-performance web services during this time. In this blog post, we will explore how to create a RESTful web service in Rust while utilizing JetBrains tools. Additionally, we will build a simple Rust client to make requests to this service for retrieving flight data.

Step 1: Setting up the Project

Before we get started, it’s crucial to have the right tools in place. JetBrains offers a range of development tools, including IntelliJ IDEA and CLion, which can also be used for Rust development. Ensure that you have the Rust plugin extension installed in your JetBrains tool for ease of development.

Create a new Rust project in your preferred JetBrains environment and give it an appropriate project name. For this example, we’ll call it „FlightService.“

Step 2: Creating a Rust Web Service

2.1 Adding Dependencies

First, we need to configure dependencies in your Cargo.toml file:

[dependencies]
actix-web = "3"
serde = { version = "1", features = ["derive"] }
serde_json = "1"

• actix-web is a Rust web framework.
• serde and serde_json are libraries used for serializing and deserializing JSON data.

Afterward, run cargo build to download the dependencies.

2.2 Creating the Main File

Create a file named main.rs in your project directory. Here’s a simple example of a RESTful API that provides flight data:

use actix_web::{get, web, App, HttpServer, Responder};
use serde::Serialize;

#[derive(Serialize)]
struct FlightData {
    flight_number: String,
    destination: String,
    departure_time: String,
}

#[get("/flights")]
async fn get_flights() -> impl Responder {
    let data = FlightData {
        flight_number: "FLT123".to_string(),
        destination: "New York".to_string(),
        departure_time: "2023-10-16T12:00:00".to_string(),
    };

    web::Json(data)
}

#[actix_web::main]
async fn main() -> std::io::Result<()> {
    HttpServer::new(|| {
        App::new().service(get_flights)
    })
    .bind("127.0.0.1:8080")?
    .run()
    .await
}

In this example, we define a simple FlightData struct and create an endpoint /flights that returns JSON data.

2.3 Starting the Web Service

Run cargo run to start the web service. Your Rust web service should now be accessible at http://127.0.0.1:8080/flights.

Step 3: Creating a Rust Client

Now that our web service is up and running, let’s create a Rust client that accesses this service. Create a new file named main.rs in a separate Rust project.

use reqwest;

#[tokio::main]
async fn main() -> Result<(), reqwest::Error> {
    let url = "http://127.0.0.1:8080/flights";
    let response = reqwest::get(url).await?;

    let flight_data: serde_json::Value = response.json().await?;
    println!("Flight Data: {:#?}", flight_data);

    Ok(())
}

This client utilizes the reqwest library to send a GET request to our web service and display the received JSON data in the console output.

Step 4: Running

Execute the Rust client with cargo run, and you should see the flight data provided by our web service in the console output.

This is a basic introduction to developing a RESTful web service in Rust using JetBrains tools and a Rust client. You can use these fundamentals to build complex applications and further expand your knowledge. Rust provides the opportunity to create secure and efficient web services, and JetBrains tools greatly simplify development and debugging. Enjoy your development journey!