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Written by Claude 🤦‍♂️: Building a Personal Website with AI, Rust and Warp

⏱️ 4 min read
Exploring how to create a fast, efficient personal website using Rust, Warp, and Askama templates.

Building a Personal Website with AI, Rust and Warp

Creating a personal website is a great way to showcase your skills and share your thoughts with the world. In this post, I'll walk you through how I built this website using Rust, the Warp web framework, and Askama templates.

Why Rust for Web Development?

Rust has been gaining significant traction in the web development space, and for good reason:

  • Performance: Rust's zero-cost abstractions and memory safety without garbage collection make it incredibly fast
  • Safety: The borrow checker prevents common bugs like null pointer dereferences and buffer overflows
  • Concurrency: Rust's ownership model makes concurrent programming much safer and easier
  • Growing Ecosystem: The Rust web ecosystem has matured significantly with frameworks like Warp, Axum, and Actix

Choosing Warp

Warp is a composable web framework that leverages Rust's type system to create robust APIs. Here's why I chose it:

  • Filter-based routing: Warp uses a composable filter system that makes routing intuitive
  • Built-in async support: Perfect for handling concurrent requests efficiently
  • Type safety: Routes are checked at compile time, reducing runtime errors
  • Lightweight: Minimal overhead while providing powerful features

Template Engine: Askama

For templating, I chose Askama because:

  • Compile-time templates: Templates are compiled into Rust code, eliminating runtime template parsing
  • Type safety: Template variables are type-checked at compile time
  • Performance: No runtime template engine overhead
  • Familiar syntax: Uses Jinja2-like syntax that's easy to learn

Project Structure

src/
├── main.rs              # Server setup and routing
├── template_routes.rs   # Template route handlers
├── blog.rs              # Blog-specific logic
└── random_list.rs       # Utility endpoints

templates/
├── base.html            # Base template
├── blog.html            # Blog listing page
└── blog_post.html       # Individual blog post page

static/
└── css/
    └── style.css        # Styling

Key Implementation Details

Server Setup

The main server setup handles both HTTP and HTTPS:

let http_server = warp::serve(routes.clone()).run(([0, 0, 0, 0], 8000));
let https_server = warp::serve(routes)
    .tls()
    .cert(cert)
    .key(key)
    .run(([0, 0, 0, 0], 8443));

Route Composition

Warp's filter system makes route composition elegant:

let blog_route = warp::path("blog")
    .and(warp::path::end())
    .and(warp::get())
    .and_then(blog);

let blog_post_route = warp::path("blog")
    .and(warp::path::param::<String>())
    .and(warp::path::end())
    .and(warp::get())
    .and_then(blog_post);

Template Rendering

Using Askama templates is straightforward:

let template = BlogTemplate {
    title: "Blog".to_string(),
    active_page: "blog".to_string(),
    posts,
};

match template.render() {
    Ok(html) => Ok(warp::reply::html(html)),
    Err(_) => Err(warp::reject::reject()),
}

Performance Considerations

  • Static file serving: Warp handles static files efficiently
  • Async everywhere: All handlers are async for maximum concurrency
  • Compile-time optimizations: Rust's compiler optimizations ensure fast runtime performance
  • Memory efficiency: No garbage collector means predictable memory usage

Deployment

The application is designed to be easily deployable:

  • Docker ready: Can be containerized for consistent deployments
  • HTTPS support: Built-in TLS support for secure connections
  • Health checks: Simple health endpoint for monitoring
  • Static file handling: Efficient serving of CSS, JS, and images

Future Enhancements

Some potential improvements for the future:

  • Database integration: Replace in-memory blog posts with a persistent store
  • Markdown support: Add proper Markdown parsing for blog content
  • Search functionality: Implement blog post search
  • RSS feed: Generate RSS feeds for blog subscribers
  • Comments system: Add a commenting system for blog posts

Conclusion

Building a personal website with Rust, Warp, and Askama has been a rewarding experience. The combination provides excellent performance, type safety, and developer experience. While the initial learning curve might be steeper than traditional web frameworks, the benefits in terms of performance and reliability make it worthwhile.

The Rust web ecosystem continues to evolve rapidly, and I'm excited to see what new tools and frameworks emerge in the coming years.

If you're interested in systems programming or want to build high-performance web applications, I highly recommend giving Rust web development a try!

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