Rust-icating the Web: A Journey into Tauri

Published in

Rustaceans

6 min readMar 19, 2024

Rust-icating the Web: A Journey into Tauri

In the realm of web technology, a new player has emerged: Tauri. Tauri is a toolkit that helps developers create lightweight, secure, and fast desktop applications with web technologies, Rust, and a minimal amount of JavaScript.

Brief Overview of Tauri

Tauri is a Rust-based framework for building desktop applications. It’s designed to be lightweight, secure, and performant, making it an excellent choice for developers who want to leverage their web development skills to build powerful desktop applications.

Why Choose Tauri for Desktop Applications

There are several reasons why you might choose Tauri for your next desktop application project:

Performance: Tauri applications have a small binary size, use minimal system resources, and launch quickly.
Security: Tauri uses the Rust language for the backend, which provides memory safety guarantees, and it enforces security best practices in the application’s frontend.
Flexibility: With Tauri, you can use any frontend framework you like, or even just plain HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, giving you the freedom to design your application exactly how you want it.

Setting Up Your Environment

Before we can start building our Tauri application, we need to set up our development environment. This involves installing Rust and Tauri, as well as their prerequisites.

Installing Rust and Setting Up the Rust Environment

Rust can be installed from the official website or via rustup, a command-line tool for managing Rust versions and associated tools. Here’s how you can install Rust using rustup:

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh

This will download a script and start the installation of rustup, Rust’s version, and its package manager, Cargo.

Installing Tauri and its Prerequisites

Tauri is a cargo subcommand and can be installed via cargo. But before we do that, we need to install Node.js and npm, which are required for Tauri’s CLI. You can download Node.js and npm from the official website or use a version manager like nvm.

Once you have Node.js and npm installed, you can install the Tauri CLI globally with this command:

npm install -g @tauri-apps/cli

Now that we have our environment set up, we’re ready to start building our first Tauri application! In the next section, we’ll create a new Tauri application and explore its structure.

Your First Tauri Application

Now that we have our environment set up, let’s dive into creating our first Tauri application.

Creating a New Tauri Application

Creating a new Tauri application is simple with the Tauri CLI. Navigate to the directory where you want to create your project and run the following command:

This will create a new Tauri application in the current directory.

Understanding the Structure of a Tauri Project

A Tauri project has a specific structure. The main directories you’ll work with are:

src-tauri: This directory contains the Rust code for your application's backend.
src: This directory contains your application's frontend code.

Running the Application

To run your Tauri application, navigate to the root directory of your project and run:

This will start your application in development mode. You should now see your application running!

Diving Deeper: Tauri’s Architecture

Now that we have a basic Tauri application up and running, let’s take a closer look at how Tauri works under the hood.

Understanding Tauri’s Backend in Rust

Tauri leverages the power and safety of Rust for its backend. The backend is responsible for creating the application window, managing web content, and providing a bridge for your frontend to access system APIs securely.

Exploring Tauri’s Frontend Capabilities

Tauri allows you to use any web technology for your frontend, whether it’s a simple HTML/CSS/JavaScript setup or a complex framework like React or Vue. This flexibility means you can leverage your existing web development skills to build desktop applications.

Interacting with the System

Tauri provides a set of APIs that allow your application to interact with the system. This includes file system access, sending notifications, and more.

Accessing System APIs with Tauri

Tauri’s API provides a bridge between your frontend code and the system’s native capabilities. This allows you to perform tasks like reading and writing files, opening URLs in the user’s default browser, and more.

Reading and Writing Files

Tauri provides a file system API that allows you to read and write files on the user’s system. This can be useful for tasks like saving user preferences, exporting data, and more.

Here’s an example of how you might read a file with Tauri:

import { fs } from '@tauri-apps/api' fs.readTextFile('path/to/file') .then(content => console.log(content)) .catch(error => console.error(error))

Sending Notifications

Tauri also provides an API for sending system notifications. This can be useful for alerting the user when a long-running task has completed, or when new information is available.

Here’s an example of how you might send a notification with Tauri:

import { notification } from '@tauri-apps/api' notification.sendNotification({ title: 'My App', body: 'Task completed!', })

Securing Your Tauri Application

Security is a crucial aspect of any application, and Tauri is no exception. Tauri provides several features to help you secure your application.

Understanding Tauri’s Security Model

Tauri’s security model is designed to protect both your application and the user’s system. It uses the Rust language for the backend, which provides memory safety guarantees. Additionally, Tauri enforces security best practices in the application’s frontend, such as Content Security Policy (CSP), to prevent common web vulnerabilities.

Best Practices for Securing Your Application

Here are some best practices for securing your Tauri application:

Minimize the use of unsafe Rust: While Rust’s unsafe keyword allows you to perform operations that are normally disallowed by the language's safety checks, it should be used sparingly and only when necessary.
Validate and sanitize input: Always validate and sanitize user input to protect against potential security vulnerabilities.
Use HTTPS for network requests: To protect data in transit, always use HTTPS for network requests.

Packaging and Distribution

Once you’ve built your Tauri application, the next step is to package it for distribution. Tauri provides a simple command-line interface for packaging your application.

Building Your Tauri Application for Distribution

To build your Tauri application for distribution, you can use the tauri build command. This will compile your application and package it into a distributable format.

tauri build

Cross-compiling for Different Platforms

Tauri supports cross-compiling, which means you can build your application on one platform (like Linux) and distribute it for use on another platform (like Windows or macOS). This is particularly useful if you want to distribute your application to users on different operating systems.

Conclusion

We’ve come a long way in our journey into Tauri. We’ve set up our environment, created our first Tauri application, dived deep into Tauri’s architecture, interacted with the system, secured our application, and even packaged it for distribution.

Recap of What We’ve Learned

We’ve learned that Tauri is a powerful tool for creating lightweight, secure, and performant desktop applications using web technologies and Rust. We’ve seen how Tauri’s flexible architecture allows us to leverage our existing web development skills while also taking advantage of Rust’s performance and safety features.

Potential Use Cases for Tauri

The potential use cases for Tauri are vast. Whether you’re building a simple utility app, a complex desktop application, or anything in between, Tauri provides the tools you need to create high-quality, cross-platform applications.

As we wrap up this article, I encourage you to continue exploring Tauri. The world of desktop application development is vast and exciting, and Tauri is a fantastic tool to help you navigate it. So keep learning, keep building, and most importantly, have fun!

That concludes the first part of our journey into Tauri. Thank you for reading, and happy coding!🦀

Support me by buying an item from my wishlist, visiting my reviews site or buy me a coffee!

Learn More

Originally published at https://levelupcoding.org on March 19, 2024.

Hey Rustaceans!

Thanks for being an awesome part of the community! Before you head off, here are a few ways to stay connected and show your love:

Give us a clap! Your appreciation helps us keep creating valuable content.
Become a contributor! ✍️ We’d love to hear your voice. Learn how to write for us.
Stay in the loop! Subscribe to the Rust Bytes Newsletter for the latest news and insights.
Support our work! ☕ Buy us a coffee.
Connect with us: X