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by qweqwe14 466 days ago
Have you heard of axum[1] or actix-web[2]? What does this do that existing Rust web servers don't?

I think the "web server" ecosystem in Rust is pretty mature by now, so you should probably state in what way your project is novel on the website.

Edit: OK, I realized that this is supposed to be an nginx/caddy replacement, so a complete, configurable web server/proxy. Maybe check out https://github.com/memorysafety/river or https://github.com/sozu-proxy/sozu

[1] https://docs.rs/axum

[2] https://docs.rs/actix-web

3 comments

Yes, I know that both Axum and Actix Web exist. However, these are web application frameworks designed for building web applications in Rust. On the other hand, my project is a standalone web server, similar to Apache httpd, NGINX, or Caddy.

While there are standalone web servers in Rust, such as Static Web Server and binserve, they primarily focus on serving static files rather than providing general-purpose web hosting capabilities. My goal is to create a more versatile web server that can handle a wider range of web hosting applications.

What about Cloudflare's pengora?

Edit: or https://github.com/memorysafety/river

Edit 2: or https://github.com/sozu-proxy/sozu

Pingora is not a standalone web server (like NGINX or Apache httpd), it's a Rust-based framework developed by Cloudflare for building network services, particularly HTTP proxies. River (built on Pingora) is designed to be a reverse proxy. My web server on the other hand is designed to be a general-purpose web server (it also supports reverse proxying).
https://github.com/cloudflare/pingora seems to be focused on providing a library/framework
It sounds like this is a general purpose web server rather than a web framework like axum and actix-web. It's in the category of nginx, apache or caddy.
I agree with you.
This was my question too so I think it's worth clarifying that on the home page.
I have just added a "What are the differences between Ferron and other web servers written in Rust?" question to Frequently Asked Questions.
You should also add more context on how it's different from Nginx and Caddy as well to that answer, your one above works well [0].

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43228231#43228376

Apparently you need to add "what is a webserver" for these new guys.
It's already in the FAQ section.