Bootstrap Rust Template

Now that you've got your environment set up, it's time to actually build something. Starting from a clean template is much better than trying to guess what configuration files you're missing.

We're going to use the AWS SAM CLI to bootstrap our project. It handles the "scaffolding" the folders, the basic code, and the cloud configuration so we can jump straight into the logic.

SAM init

Open your terminal and run the initialization command. AWS SAM is interactive, so it will ask you a few questions.

sam init

Here are the choices I usually make to get a solid Rust foundation:

1. Which template source? Choose 1 - AWS Quick Start Templates.
2. Choose an application pattern? Choose 1 - Hello World Example.
3. Use the most modern runtime? Enter N (we want to pick specifically).
4. Which runtime? Look for rust (provided.al2023) or similar. Usually it's around option 22-23 depending on the version.
5. Would you like to enable X-Ray tracing on the function(s) in your application? Enter N (we can enable it later if needed).
6. Would you like to enable monitoring using CloudWatch Application Insights? Enter N (we can enable it later if needed).
7. Would you like to set Structured Logging in JSON format on your Lambda functions? Enter y (it's just better for logs).
8. Project name Let's call it rust-serverless-api.

You should see something like this:

    -----------------------
    Generating application:
    -----------------------
    Name: rust-serverless-api
    Runtime: rust (provided.al2023)
    Architectures: x86_64
    Dependency Manager: cargo
    Application Template: hello-world
    Output Directory: .
    Configuration file: rust-serverless-api/samconfig.toml
    
    Next steps can be found in the README file at rust-serverless-api/README.md
        
 
Commands you can use next
=========================
[*] Create pipeline: cd rust-serverless-api && sam pipeline init --bootstrap
[*] Validate SAM template: cd rust-serverless-api && sam validate
[*] Test Function in the Cloud: cd rust-serverless-api && sam sync --stack-name {stack-name} --watch

File Structure

Once the command finishes, you'll have a new folder called rust-serverless-api. And your file structure will look like this:

rust-serverless-api/
├── events/
│   └── event.json
├── rust_app/
│   ├── Cargo.toml
│   ├── src/
│   │   └── main.rs
├── README.md
├── samconfig.toml
└── template.yaml

Congratulations, you now have a Rust project set up with AWS SAM. :)

Testing it out locally

Naaah, testing locally is kind of little complicated, so we're gonna skip it for now. because you are going to need Docker for that

Maybe in the future I'll write a post about it.

In the next post, we'll customize our file structure and necessary files to make things easier.