Monthly Archives: August 2018

To Make or Not to Make – Using cargo make for Rookeries v0.12.0

Posted on by

I was pleasantly surprised when my last blog post about migrating to Rust’s integration tests really took off on Twitter. I did not quite expect that much interest. 🙂

Using cargo-make

I recently continued with my exploration of Rust through Rookeries (my attempt at a static site generator/backing API server). This time I worked on switching over from using invoke and GNU make to using a nice build system called cargo-make. Overall I am quite happy with the result. To give you a taste of how cargo-make describes build tasks and environment variables, I included a short snippet from the Rookeries Makefile.toml below:

<br />
[env]
SERVER_PORT = "5000"

[tasks.build-js]
description = "Build JS frontend."
command = "npm"
args = ["run", "build"]

[tasks.run-dev-server]
description = "Run a Rookeries dev server."
command = "cargo"
args = ["run", "--", "run", "${SERVER_PORT}"]
dependencies = ["build-js"]

Much like invoke and Make, you can specify dependencies. Unlike Make, there is no weird tab-based syntax, or implicit behaviour that requires a look up in the GNU Make manual. Just a simple TOML file. Environment variables can be specified in standalone .env files, passed in or specified in the Makefile.toml itself, and allow for variables specified during a run to override defaults, etc. cargo-make also lets you use conditional logic but I did not need to use that for my purposes.

For Rookeries, I ended up creating locally running tasks, and versions for the Dockerized build setup that I have in CircleCI. Also I ended up using the scripting support that cargo-make provides for preparing the database for, and running the integration tests.

My Thoughts on CouchDB for Rookeries and Rust

I feel I cheated a bit towards the end especially by using a few curl commands to instantiate the CouchDB database, and with running the API integration tests. Maybe I should of wrote a proper CouchDB library and utility. However I decided against it, simply because I want move away from CouchDB for Rookeries. So I may not want to invest that much time in maintaining a proper database client if I’ll end up switching over to using Postgresql via diesel.rs Originally, I started using CouchDB because I use it heavily at my work at Points. As time goes on, I find myself more and more reluctant with using CouchDB, just because of all the issues I’ve experienced at work. That said, if someone wants me to maintain a CouchDB Rust library/CLI based on the code I have for Rookeries, then please reach out to me. The CouchDB crates I saw in crates.io did not inspire me, so I wrote my own CouchDB module in Rust. But I don’t want to maintain that code just for myself, so if anyone actually needs a proper CouchDB crate and wants me to maintain it, please reach out to me.

Update – Sofa Library

After I wrote this blog post originally, I did not know about this nice CouchDB crate called sofa. If I had know about it, I would of not bothered with my own implementation.

New Release of Rookeries – Now 100% Rust

Finally since this migration was a bit of work, so I decided to release a new version of Rookeries. Since the invoke setup was the last Python code, Rookeries is now 100% completely written in Rust. (And the JS frontend naturally.) The Rookeries Docker image is available on Docker Hub. The project is still quite in flux, and what I will work on next depends on what I need to do to hook up Rookeries to one of my Gatsby powered sites.

Writing Integration Tests in Rust + Releasing Rookeries v0.11.0

Posted on by

As part of my overall change over in Rookeries, from Python to Rust, I rewrote a suite of integration tests for the server API. To celebrate my successful transition, I released version 0.11.0 of Rookeries, whose tests use pure Rust now!

I found the rewrite not too cumbersome, thanks to the wonderful guide in the Rust book on integration tests. I did miss pytest’s fixture setup, which makes testing really easy. Especially when setting up fixtures that are run only once per test suite. That said, a single session setup makes it difficult to run tests in parallel. And while I ran into some inconsistent tests, I had the exact same kind of problems in Python. Basically my data model for Rookeries, doesn’t work well for singleton data like a single site. In the future, I plan on having a single Rookeries instance managing multiple different sites, so this point of not having a single test setup is ultimately moot.

Building a common setup module turned out to be more work than I imagined. I could not use macros because of the package setup. Also since tests are compiled individually, some methods in the common module, simply are not called, leading to warning of dead code.

What made the transition is easy was using the reqwest crate, and heavy use of serde_json’s json! macro. Comparing the Python and Rust version of the tests, makes them look very comparable.

Rust Version src:

#[test]
fn test_authenticated_user_cannot_modify_site_using_bad_request() {
    test_site();
    let api_base_uri = common::api_base_url();
    let client = Client::new();
    let auth_token = auth_token_headers();
    let response = client
        .put(api_base_uri.join("/api/site").unwrap())
        .body("")
        .header(Authorization(auth_token))
        .send()
        .unwrap();

    assert_bad_request_response(response);
}

fn assert_bad_request_response(mut response: Response) {
    let expected_response_json = json!({
        "error": {
            "status_code": 400,
            "message": "Bad request",
        }
    });

    assert_eq!(response.status(), StatusCode::BadRequest);
    let actual_json_response = response.json::<Value>().unwrap();
    assert_eq!(actual_json_response, expected_response_json);
}

Python Version src:

def test_authenticated_user_cannot_modify_site_using_bad_request(
        auth_token_headers, api_base_uri, test_site):
    response = requests.put(
        url=f'{api_base_uri}/api/site',
        data='',
        headers=auth_token_headers,
    )
    assert_bad_request_response(response)

def assert_bad_request_response(response):
    expected_response_json = {
        'error': {
            'status_code': http.HTTPStatus.BAD_REQUEST.value,
            'message': mock.ANY,
        }
    }

    assert response.json() == expected_response_json
    assert response.status_code == http.HTTPStatus.BAD_REQUEST

I am pretty happy with how everything turned out overall. My next bit of Rookeries work will be migrating away from invoke and make to cargo make.

Rookeries v0.10.0 – Rust Re-write

Posted on by

I just rewrote Rookeries in Rust, and the latest version is now available as a Docker image on Docker Hub. (This is why I have not responded to emails in a bit… I’ve been doing a lot of thinking of what I want to do next.)

So why a rewrite? Ultimately I decided to change the direction of Rookeries as a project (making it more of a static site generation tool + headless CMS). I also wanted to improve my knowledge of Rust. (A programming language that I believe is quietly revolutionizing computing bit by bit. I really need to write about it sometime) But to show that there is reason for my madness:

Traditional CMS

I realized that my approach to Rookeries was heavily inspired by WordPress. And WordPress represents the best in class (in terms of ease-of-use) for traditional CMS. Traditional CMS being applications that control all the aspects of a website: pulling data that it organizes inside a database, the applying logic to manage the workflows of the data, and the creating and managing the user interface that ultimately shows the data. The traditional CMS has to do a lot of things. That usually means that the CMS developer needs to add a lot of assumptions and constraints to ship said CMS. And when those assumptions no longer hold, it takes a lot to change the codebase.

In the case of WordPress (and similar styled CMSs), the server has to do a lot of work with building a page. A WordPress site consists of both the site, and its admin console. While there has been work on updating the theme management and the page/post editor, ultimately there are limits to what kind of UIs that WordPress can support. WordPress also has a massive plugin marketplace, because the core developers do not know what every website will need. (Nor does it make sense to build everything in or every possibility.) For a modern WordPress powered site to stand-out, it needs needs a custom theme and often a half-dozen plugins. Naturally having so many moving parts, from different vendors (some theme and plugin devs are better than others) means there is a a greater chance of security issues. The routine upgrade of themes, plugins and the WordPress core is a rite that one has to diligently perform regularly.

It would be impossible for Rookeries to compete with WordPress head on, just given the number of hours I would need to sink to make things a reality. Also I do not think this desirable given the current direction.

The Alternative of Static Site Generation and API Driven Sites

The assumption that the server must handle most of the layout and display issues does not hold when dealing with modern browsers. Modern browsers can run rich multimedia experiences and real-time applications. Running intensive applications such as a 3D game is now possible, and will become come place. Ultimately the web is now a platform, a target that application developers can directly target.

As a result, many web agencies are turning to the JAMstack and having their websites act as their own full-blown applications. The applications either talk to a headless CMS acting an API or even foregoing that with static site generation. Probably the best example of this is Gatsby for generating sites built in React, which I am currently using to build out the Amber Penguin Software site. I also plan on eventually converting my other existing WordPress sites to use Gatsby or a similar tool. These tools as other web agencies found, separate out the complex logic of a frontend app from the backend and its data. These means more flexibility when building out a site. It also means that the backend CMS can be hardened and simplified to avoid many security issues. In fact with static site generation, the web app can be so removed from its CMS and database, that attacking a site becomes irrelevant. Such a site can also have better performance, and take advantage of caching and CDNs.

The Future of Rookeries

While there are a number of headless CMS and static site generators out there, I feel like the overall experience of working with them needs some improvement. There are no real good headless CMS systems written in Python or Rust, and I do think there are some really unpleasant rough edges around running a static site. Hence I plan on reworking Rookeries to help me build a CMS that can power my various sites. At the moment, this version 0.10.0 has feature parity with the previous version of Rookeries. I still need to rewrite some of the admin and testing in Rust, to avoid the need for Python. Also I need to figure out a nice manner to expose a flexible API to my sites. Fortunately I have enough examples to keep me busy for a bit.