mirror of https://github.com/rwf2/Rocket.git
186 lines
6.3 KiB
Markdown
186 lines
6.3 KiB
Markdown
# Overview
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Rocket provides primitives to build web servers and applications with Rust: the
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rest is up to you. In short, Rocket provides routing, pre-processing of
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requests, and post-processing of responses. Your application code instructs
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Rocket on what to pre-process and post-process and fills the gaps between
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pre-processing and post-processing.
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## Lifecycle
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Rocket's main task is to listen for incoming web requests, dispatch the request
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to the application code, and return a response to the client. We call the
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process that goes from request to response the "lifecycle". We summarize the
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lifecycle as the following sequence of steps:
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1. **Routing**
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Rocket parses an incoming HTTP request into native structures that your
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code operates on indirectly. Rocket determines which request handler to
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invoke by matching against route attributes declared in your application.
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2. **Validation**
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Rocket validates the incoming request against types and guards present in
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the matched route. If validation fails, Rocket _forwards_ the request to
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the next matching route or calls an _error handler_.
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3. **Processing**
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The request handler associated with the route is invoked with validated
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arguments. This is the main business logic of an application. Processing
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completes by returning a `Response`.
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4. **Response**
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The returned `Response` is processed. Rocket generates the appropriate HTTP
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response and sends it to the client. This completes the lifecycle. Rocket
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continues listening for requests, restarting the lifecycle for each
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incoming request.
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The remainder of this section details the _routing_ phase as well as additional
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components needed for Rocket to begin dispatching requests to request handlers.
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The sections following describe the request and response phases as well as other
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components of Rocket.
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## Routing
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Rocket applications are centered around routes and handlers. A _route_ is a
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combination of:
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* A set of parameters to match an incoming request against.
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* A handler to process the request and return a response.
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A _handler_ is simply a function that takes an arbitrary number of arguments and
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returns any arbitrary type.
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The parameters to match against include static paths, dynamic paths, path
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segments, forms, query strings, request format specifiers, and body data. Rocket
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uses attributes, which look like function decorators in other languages, to make
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declaring routes easy. Routes are declared by annotating a function, the
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handler, with the set of parameters to match against. A complete route
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declaration looks like this:
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```rust
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#[get("/world")] // <- route attribute
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fn world() -> &'static str { // <- request handler
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"Hello, world!"
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}
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```
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This declares the `world` route to match against the static path `"/world"` on
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incoming `GET` requests. The `world` route is simple, but additional route
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parameters are necessary when building more interesting applications. The
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[Requests](/guide/requests) section describes the available options for
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constructing routes.
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## Mounting
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Before Rocket can dispatch requests to a route, the route needs to be _mounted_.
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Mounting a route is like namespacing it. Routes are mounted via the `mount`
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method on a `Rocket` instance. A `Rocket` instance is typically created with the
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`rocket::ignite()` static method.
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The `mount` method takes:
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1. A path to namespace a list of routes under,
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2. A list of route handlers through the `routes!` macro, tying Rocket's code
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generation to your application.
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For instance, to mount the `world` route we declared above, we can write the
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following:
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```rust
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rocket::ignite().mount("/hello", routes![world]);
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```
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This creates a new `Rocket` instance via the `ignite` function and mounts the
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`world` route to the `"/hello"` path. As a result, `GET` requests to the
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`"/hello/world"` path will be directed to the `world` function.
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### Namespacing
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When a route is declared inside a module other than the root, you may find
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yourself with unexpected errors when mounting:
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```rust
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mod other {
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#[get("/world")]
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pub fn world() -> &'static str {
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"Hello, world!"
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}
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}
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use other::world;
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fn main() {
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// error[E0425]: cannot find value `static_rocket_route_info_for_world` in this scope
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rocket::ignite().mount("/hello", routes![world]);
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}
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```
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This occurs because the `routes!` macro implicitly converts the route's name
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into the name of a structure generated by Rocket's code generation. The solution
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is to name the route by a module path instead:
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```rust
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rocket::ignite().mount("/hello", routes![other::world]);
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```
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## Launching
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Now that Rocket knows about the route, you can tell Rocket to start accepting
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requests via the `launch` method. The method starts up the server and waits for
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incoming requests. When a request arrives, Rocket finds the matching route and
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dispatches the request to the route's handler.
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We typically call `launch` from the `main` function. Our complete _Hello,
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world!_ application thus looks like:
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```rust
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#![feature(plugin)]
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#![plugin(rocket_codegen)]
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extern crate rocket;
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#[get("/world")]
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fn world() -> &'static str {
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"Hello, world!"
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}
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fn main() {
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rocket::ignite().mount("/hello", routes![world]).launch();
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}
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```
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Note that we've added the `#![feature(plugin)]` and `#![plugin(rocket_codegen)]`
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lines to tell Rust that we'll be using Rocket's code generation plugin. We've
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also imported the `rocket` crate into our namespace via `extern crate rocket`.
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Finally, we call the `launch` method in the `main` function.
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Running the application, the console shows:
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```sh
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🔧 Configured for development.
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=> address: localhost
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=> port: 8000
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=> log: normal
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=> workers: [logical cores * 2]
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=> secret key: generated
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=> limits: forms = 32KiB
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=> tls: disabled
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🛰 Mounting '/hello':
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=> GET /hello/world
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🚀 Rocket has launched from http://localhost:8000
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```
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If we visit `localhost:8000/hello/world`, we see `Hello, world!`, exactly as
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we expected.
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A version of this example's complete crate, ready to `cargo run`, can be found
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on
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[GitHub](https://github.com/SergioBenitez/Rocket/tree/v0.3.12/examples/hello_world).
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You can find dozens of other complete examples, spanning all of Rocket's
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features, in the [GitHub examples
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directory](https://github.com/SergioBenitez/Rocket/tree/v0.3.12/examples/).
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