Topcoat: The Full Full-Stack Framework for Rust
I present Topcoat, a modular, batteries-included Rust framework designed to simplify full-stack web development. It eliminates traditional boilerplate by rendering markup on the server while enabling instant client-side interactivity without WebAssembly or build steps. With features like module-based routing, built-in Tailwind support, and powerful HTML templates, Topcoat prioritizes developer productivity and simplicity.
Topcoat renders all markup on the server: components can be async and query the database directly, eliminating all the traditional boilerplate needed for a separate API layer.
- carllerche
I didn't expect to see this here yet. We opened up the repo because we ran out of private CI usage. A blog post is coming next week :). Happy to answer questions here though.
One thing to keep in mind, the main reason for Topcoat to exist is that many organizations are already using Rust for infrastructure-level or performance sensitive reasons and often just want to build a web app using the programming language they already use.
- jjice
Oh man I'd love a nice full stack framework in Rust! Django, Laravel, and Rails are very neat. I used to be a micro framework kind of guy, but having everything integrated is more and more appealing over the last few years.
This would take a long time to get feature complete with the core of those big full stack frameworks, but I'm rooting for it! Getting to use the Rust type system with a full stack web framework sounds incredible.
- frio
Exciting, but I’d give a lot for an equivalent to Django. There are very few problems I need to solve that are fixed by htmx style “full stack” apps, but many that are solved by the generated admin, authentication framework, caching, eventing etc.
Unfortunately, you end up bound to Python’s poor performance and poor typing stories, which Rust solves in spades.
- hobofan
Hmm... I'm a big fan of a lot of the things that the tokio project has built and a happy user of axum.
I'm not sure that projects like Topcoat and something like their ORM is a great direction for the project, and worry that they will possibly gain outsized adoption in the community based on name recognition rather than merit.
- mamcx
This sound fantastic and Django is the main thing I miss from python.
htmx+ tailwindcss is the one combo that is right and I use it so seeing is the direction give me hope.
Some notes, I hope can be considered!:
- The main thing is the auto admin, then `auth`, is great that the `auth` is mean to have a one-to-one connection for your own extensions
- The main pain is that everything is tangled to the ORM and the auto-admin
What I have done informally is that with traits I have something like `ListQuery` and compose `Paginate(ListQuery)`.
Then pure descriptors of what the ui DO, but not what it looks like and not even html at all.
THEN, I inject the stucts/enums (all Ui is things like `Label{...}` with not logic at all in templating, all the server side is in charge of pre-render) into some templating and there is where the ui is alive, but replacing is 100% doable and expected.
What I miss is a way to introspect to auto-generate things more auto.