Backend Rust

A practical guide to building production backend services in Rust — with Axum, Tokio, SQLx, and the rest of the modern async ecosystem.

This is a CloudStreet book. Technical, accurate, and genuinely amusing. The reader is a competent developer who knows Rust basics and is ready to build something real. No toy examples. No guessing which crate to use.

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Read the Book

→ Read online at cloudstreet-dev.github.io/Backend-Rust

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Table of Contents

Chapter	Topic
Introduction	Why Rust for the Backend?
Async Rust	Tokio and the Runtime Under Your Feet
HTTP Servers	Axum: Routing, Middleware, and State
Databases	SQLx: Async, Typed, and Honest
Authentication	JWTs, Sessions, and Not Screwing It Up
Error Handling	thiserror, anyhow, and When to Use Which
Configuration	Environments, dotenv, and Not Leaking Things
Testing	Unit, Integration, and the Awkward Middle
Observability	Tracing, Logging, and Knowing What Broke
Deployment	Docker, Binaries, and Why Your Image Can Be Tiny
Conclusion	Where to Go From Here

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The Stack

Concern	Crate	Version
Async runtime	tokio	1.x
HTTP framework	axum	0.7.x
Database	sqlx	0.7.x
Middleware	tower / tower-http	0.5.x
Tracing	tracing / tracing-subscriber	0.1.x
Error handling	thiserror / anyhow	1.x
Configuration	config + dotenvy	0.14.x / 0.15.x
JWT	jsonwebtoken	9.x

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Building Locally

Prerequisites

Install Rust (1.75+):

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

Install mdBook:

cargo install mdbook

Build and Serve

# Clone the repo
git clone https://github.com/cloudstreet-dev/Backend-Rust.git
cd Backend-Rust

# Serve locally with live reload
mdbook serve --open

# Build to ./book/
mdbook build

The book will be available at http://localhost:3000.

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About

Built with mdBook. Deployed to GitHub Pages on every push to main.

Code examples are written for the 2021 edition and target Rust 1.75+. All examples use the async/await syntax and are designed to compile against current stable crate versions.

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CloudStreet — making the useful also readable.