Terminal.skills
Skills/actix-web
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actix-web

Actix Web is a powerful, high-performance web framework for Rust. It provides async handlers, type-safe extractors, middleware, and integrates with the Rust ecosystem for building fast, reliable, and memory-safe web services.

#rust#web#api#async#performance#type-safe
terminal-skillsv1.0.0
Works with:claude-codeopenai-codexgemini-clicursor
Source

Usage

$
✓ Installed actix-web v1.0.0

Getting Started

  1. Install the skill using the command above
  2. Open your AI coding agent (Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, or Cursor)
  3. Reference the skill in your prompt
  4. The AI will use the skill's capabilities automatically

Example Prompts

  • "Review the open pull requests and summarize what needs attention"
  • "Generate a changelog from the last 20 commits on the main branch"

Information

Version
1.0.0
Author
terminal-skills
Category
Development
License
Apache-2.0

Documentation

Actix Web is one of the fastest web frameworks available. It uses Rust's type system for compile-time safety, async/await for concurrency, and extractors for ergonomic request handling.

Installation

toml
# Cargo.toml — dependencies
[dependencies]
actix-web = "4"
actix-rt = "2"
serde = { version = "1", features = ["derive"] }
serde_json = "1"
sqlx = { version = "0.7", features = ["runtime-tokio", "postgres", "macros"] }
tokio = { version = "1", features = ["full"] }
env_logger = "0.11"

Project Structure

# Recommended Actix Web project layout
src/
├── main.rs              # Entry point and server config
├── config.rs            # Configuration
├── routes/
│   ├── mod.rs           # Route registration
│   ├── articles.rs      # Article handlers
│   └── health.rs        # Health check
├── models/
│   └── article.rs       # Data structures
├── db/
│   └── article.rs       # Database queries
├── middleware/
│   └── auth.rs          # Auth middleware
└── errors.rs            # Error types

Main and Server Setup

rust
// src/main.rs — application entry point
use actix_web::{web, App, HttpServer, middleware::Logger};
use sqlx::postgres::PgPoolOptions;

mod routes;
mod models;
mod db;
mod errors;

#[actix_web::main]
async fn main() -> std::io::Result<()> {
    env_logger::init();

    let database_url = std::env::var("DATABASE_URL")
        .unwrap_or_else(|_| "postgres://localhost/mydb".to_string());

    let pool = PgPoolOptions::new()
        .max_connections(10)
        .connect(&database_url)
        .await
        .expect("Failed to create pool");

    HttpServer::new(move || {
        App::new()
            .wrap(Logger::default())
            .app_data(web::Data::new(pool.clone()))
            .configure(routes::configure)
    })
    .bind("0.0.0.0:8080")?
    .run()
    .await
}

Route Configuration

rust
// src/routes/mod.rs — centralized route registration
use actix_web::web;

mod articles;
mod health;

pub fn configure(cfg: &mut web::ServiceConfig) {
    cfg.service(
        web::scope("/api")
            .route("/health", web::get().to(health::check))
            .service(
                web::scope("/articles")
                    .route("", web::get().to(articles::list))
                    .route("", web::post().to(articles::create))
                    .route("/{id}", web::get().to(articles::get))
                    .route("/{id}", web::delete().to(articles::delete))
            )
    );
}

Models

rust
// src/models/article.rs — data models with serde
use serde::{Deserialize, Serialize};
use sqlx::FromRow;

#[derive(Debug, Serialize, FromRow)]
pub struct Article {
    pub id: i32,
    pub title: String,
    pub body: String,
    pub published: bool,
    pub created_at: chrono::NaiveDateTime,
}

#[derive(Debug, Deserialize)]
pub struct CreateArticle {
    pub title: String,
    pub body: String,
}

#[derive(Debug, Deserialize)]
pub struct ListParams {
    pub page: Option<u32>,
    pub limit: Option<u32>,
}

Handlers with Extractors

rust
// src/routes/articles.rs — request handlers
use actix_web::{web, HttpResponse};
use sqlx::PgPool;
use crate::models::article::{Article, CreateArticle, ListParams};
use crate::errors::AppError;

pub async fn list(
    pool: web::Data<PgPool>,
    query: web::Query<ListParams>,
) -> Result<HttpResponse, AppError> {
    let limit = query.limit.unwrap_or(20).min(100) as i64;
    let offset = ((query.page.unwrap_or(1) - 1) * limit as u32) as i64;

    let articles = sqlx::query_as::<_, Article>(
        "SELECT * FROM articles WHERE published = true ORDER BY created_at DESC LIMIT $1 OFFSET $2"
    )
    .bind(limit)
    .bind(offset)
    .fetch_all(pool.get_ref())
    .await?;

    Ok(HttpResponse::Ok().json(articles))
}

pub async fn create(
    pool: web::Data<PgPool>,
    body: web::Json<CreateArticle>,
) -> Result<HttpResponse, AppError> {
    let article = sqlx::query_as::<_, Article>(
        "INSERT INTO articles (title, body) VALUES ($1, $2) RETURNING *"
    )
    .bind(&body.title)
    .bind(&body.body)
    .fetch_one(pool.get_ref())
    .await?;

    Ok(HttpResponse::Created().json(article))
}

pub async fn get(
    pool: web::Data<PgPool>,
    path: web::Path<i32>,
) -> Result<HttpResponse, AppError> {
    let id = path.into_inner();
    let article = sqlx::query_as::<_, Article>("SELECT * FROM articles WHERE id = $1")
        .bind(id)
        .fetch_optional(pool.get_ref())
        .await?
        .ok_or(AppError::NotFound)?;

    Ok(HttpResponse::Ok().json(article))
}

Error Handling

rust
// src/errors.rs — custom error types
use actix_web::{HttpResponse, ResponseError};
use std::fmt;

#[derive(Debug)]
pub enum AppError {
    NotFound,
    Internal(String),
    Database(sqlx::Error),
}

impl fmt::Display for AppError {
    fn fmt(&self, f: &mut fmt::Formatter<'_>) -> fmt::Result {
        match self {
            AppError::NotFound => write!(f, "Not found"),
            AppError::Internal(msg) => write!(f, "{}", msg),
            AppError::Database(e) => write!(f, "Database error: {}", e),
        }
    }
}

impl ResponseError for AppError {
    fn error_response(&self) -> HttpResponse {
        match self {
            AppError::NotFound => HttpResponse::NotFound().json(serde_json::json!({"error": "not found"})),
            _ => HttpResponse::InternalServerError().json(serde_json::json!({"error": "internal error"})),
        }
    }
}

impl From<sqlx::Error> for AppError {
    fn from(e: sqlx::Error) -> Self { AppError::Database(e) }
}

Middleware

rust
// src/middleware/auth.rs — simple auth middleware
use actix_web::{dev::ServiceRequest, Error, HttpMessage};
use actix_web::error::ErrorUnauthorized;

pub async fn validate_token(req: &ServiceRequest) -> Result<(), Error> {
    let token = req.headers()
        .get("Authorization")
        .and_then(|v| v.to_str().ok())
        .and_then(|v| v.strip_prefix("Bearer "));

    match token {
        Some(t) => {
            let user_id = verify_jwt(t).map_err(|_| ErrorUnauthorized("invalid token"))?;
            req.extensions_mut().insert(user_id);
            Ok(())
        }
        None => Err(ErrorUnauthorized("missing token")),
    }
}

Testing

rust
// tests/articles_test.rs — integration test
use actix_web::{test, App, web};

#[actix_web::test]
async fn test_list_articles() {
    let pool = setup_test_db().await;
    let app = test::init_service(
        App::new()
            .app_data(web::Data::new(pool))
            .configure(routes::configure)
    ).await;

    let req = test::TestRequest::get().uri("/api/articles").to_request();
    let resp = test::call_service(&app, req).await;
    assert_eq!(resp.status(), 200);
}

Key Patterns

  • Use extractors (web::Json, web::Path, web::Query, web::Data) for type-safe request parsing
  • Implement ResponseError on custom error types for automatic HTTP error responses
  • Use web::Data for shared application state (DB pool, config) — it's cheaply cloneable
  • Use sqlx with compile-time checked queries (sqlx::query!) for production code
  • Use configure functions to modularize route registration
  • Use #[actix_web::test] for async integration tests with test::init_service