Server Side Components

The Dioxus framework gives us the capability to build user interfaces out of components which can be rendered server side. It's worth looking at their components documentation.

Creating a ui-components crate

cargo init --lib crates/ui-components

Install Dioxus

cd crates/ui-components
cargo add [email protected] --features ssr

Creating a Layout Component

A layout defines the surroundings of an HTML page. It's the place to define a common look and feel of your final output.

create a file called crates/ui-components/src/layout.rs.

#![allow(non_snake_case)]

use dioxus::prelude::*;

// Remember: owned props must implement PartialEq!
#[derive(Props)]
pub struct AppLayoutProps<'a> {
    title: &'a str,
    children: Element<'a>,
}

pub fn Layout<'a>(cx: Scope<'a, AppLayoutProps<'a>>) -> Element {
    cx.render(rsx!(
        {
            LazyNodes::new(|f| f.text(format_args!("<!DOCTYPE html><html lang='en'>")))
        }
        head {
            title {
                "{cx.props.title}"
            }
            meta {
                charset: "utf-8"
            }
            meta {
                "http-equiv": "X-UA-Compatible",
                content: "IE=edge"
            }
            meta {
                name: "viewport",
                content: "width=device-width, initial-scale=1"
            }
        }
        body {
            &cx.props.children
        }
    ))
}

Let's use this layout to create a very simple users screen that will show a table of users.

Make sure you're in the crates/ui-components folder and add the db crate to your Cargo.toml using the following command:

cargo add --path ../db

Create a file crates/ui-components/src/users.rs.

use crate::layout::Layout;
use db::User;
use dioxus::prelude::*;

struct Props {
    users: Vec<User>
}

// Take a Vec<User> and create an HTML table.
pub fn users(users: Vec<User>) -> String {

    // Inner function to create our rsx! component
    fn app(cx: Scope<Props>) -> Element {
        cx.render(rsx! {
            Layout {    // <-- Use our layout
                title: "Users Table",
                table {
                    thead {
                        tr {
                            th { "ID" }
                            th { "Email" }
                        }
                    }
                    tbody {
                        cx.props.users.iter().map(|user| rsx!(
                            tr {
                                td {
                                    strong {
                                        "{user.id}"
                                    }
                                }
                                td {
                                    "{user.email}"
                                }
                            }
                        ))
                    }
                }
            }
        })
    }

    // Construct our component and render it to a string.
    let mut app = VirtualDom::new_with_props(
        app,
        Props {
            users
        },
    );
    let _ = app.rebuild();
    dioxus::ssr::render_vdom(&app)
}

If we update our crates/ui-components/src/lib.rs to look like the following...

mod layout;
pub mod users;

Then finally we can change our axum-server code to generate HTML rather than JSON.

Make sure you're in the crates/axum-server folder and add the ui_components crate to your Cargo.toml using the following command:

cargo add --path ../ui_components

Update crates/axum-server/src/main.rs

mod config;
mod errors;

use crate::errors::CustomError;
use axum::{response::Html, extract::Extension, routing::get, Router};
use std::net::SocketAddr;

#[tokio::main]
async fn main() {
    let config = config::Config::new();

    let pool = db::create_pool(&config.database_url);

    // build our application with a route
    let app = Router::new()
        .route("/", get(users))
        .layer(Extension(config))
        .layer(Extension(pool.clone()));

    // run it
    let addr = SocketAddr::from(([127, 0, 0, 1], 3000));
    println!("listening on {}", addr);
    axum::Server::bind(&addr)
        .serve(app.into_make_service())
        .await.unwrap();
}

async fn users(Extension(pool): Extension<db::Pool>) -> Result<Html<String>, CustomError> {
    let client = pool.get().await?;

    let users = db::queries::users::get_users()
        .bind(&client)
        .all()
        .await?;
    
    // We now return HTML
    Ok(Html(ui_components::users::users(
        users,
    )))
}

You should get results like the screenshot below.

Users