cargocrevreviews

Write cargo-crev reviews in a Graphical User Interface with a cross-platform app written in rust
repository; version: 2021.918.1721 date: 2021-09-18 authors: Luciano Bestia

Lines in Rust code Lines in Doc comments Lines in Comments Lines in examples Lines in tests

Try it

Warning: only one review for cratename+crateversion is allowed. The old review will be removed before saving the new review. This project does not edit Issues or Advisories, only Reviews.
If you already have cargo-crev installed and configured:

bash cargo install cargo_crev_reviews cargo_crev_reviews

screen<em>3
Input your passphrase for cargo-crev proof signing.
screen</em>1 screen_2

Motivation

I think cargo-crev is a great tool to express trustworthiness in the open-source community, especially for the rust programming language. I fear so much of supply chain attacks using dependencies from crates.io. For the smallest project you can get 100 dependencies easily. How to trust them all? To review them all manually? It is just crazy.
But if enough people write reviews, it will be so much easier to trust the code. It is the same principle as booking.com or air-bnb. Guests of a hotel write a review about their actual experience in the hotel. And you can read a hopefully truthful review and can understand if the hotel is good or bad. Sometimes can happen to find a fake review, but if there is enough people, most of them will be sincere.
Sadly, writing reviews in cargo-crev is hard. Let's make a GUI wrapper around cargo-crev to make write reviews easier.
We will see walking the path what obstacles we must overcome.

Technical decisions

Rust does not have a true GUI story. It is mostly for CLI and libraries. Because GUI is mostly non cross-platform. But rust is the best language for Wasm/Webassembly. So let's combine this.
I will make a rust workspace (multi-projects):

  1. CLI for a web server (local micro-server)
  2. Wasm for the browser (chrome and similar)

The web server CLI will access files, commands, libraries and the network. This will work only in Linux, but today Win10 has integrated Linux with WSL2. It will work just fine on all the operating systems sensible for rust development.
Wasm in browser will just access the local micro web server. This is gonna be the GUI and because the browser works in every OS, this is cross-platform development.

I want the simplest web server ever. It will be used exclusively locally from one super simple web-application, so don't need to care much about security. I choose simple server from the rust book. I don't care about multi-threading or async , because it will be used by only one browser. The example from the book evolved into the github repository of the author of the book github.com/steveklabnik. I cloned it and update the dependencies and consequently fixed some broken code. I published it as devbestiasimple_server on crates.io.

For the browser I will create a simple web app. All the code will be in rust, I will avoid javascript. The GUI will be in HTML5 and CSS3. This is all supported by all modern browsers.

Development

I will use cargo-auto to automate the tasks needed to build the project. It is a workspace (multi-project), so this will be interesting. I will update the code of cargo-auto to work with workspaces. Cargo-auto is also a project of mine.
The sub-directory automation_tasks_rs is the rust project for cargo-auto.

The rust workspace is made of members:

The sub-directory web_server_folder contains all the files and folder structure for a working development web_server.
But this files are not used directly. Because of the way the publish to crates.io works, I will embed them inside the rust code as strings (base64 encoded if needed). I will make an automation task for that.

backend - cargocrevreviews

This is a micro-web-server intended for local use with only one local browser connected to it.
I wanted to give it the name cargo_crev_reviews_micro_web_server_backend, but because this one will be published on crates.io, I must give it the name of the whole project cargo_crev_reviews.
It is the backend of the application cargo_crev_reviews.
The frontend is the GUI web app that runs in the browser and is connected only to this backend. It is provided also by the backend app.
Together the backend and the frontend form a complete application that is cross-platform.
They share some structs for communication that are defined in the common_mod module. One automation task copies the content from backend to frontend projects to keep them in sync.
The only URL the server operates is: http://127.0.0.1:8182/cargo_crev_reviews

If I want to publish this on crates.io it must all be inside one binary executable file.
It means that all the static files: css, html, icons, images, ... must be inside the rust code.
For developing it is practical to have all this files as files.
But before release an automation task converts this files to strings and put them into the rust code.

The micro-server will accept mostly POST with json similar to json-rpc. But sure I had to modify it to something more adequate for my use-case. I think in the future I will change that even more to something more adequate.

```bash Syntax:

--> data sent to Server - request <-- data sent to Client - response

rpc call with named parameters:

--> { "requestmethod": "subtractcalculate", "request_data": { "subtrahend": 23, "minuend": 42, } }

<-- { "responsemethod": "subtractshow", "responsedata": { "subtracted": 19,
}, "responsehtml":"..."
} ```

An example how to test a POST request with curl:

bash curl -d '{"request_method": "subtract", "request_data": {"subtrahend": 23, "minuend": 42}}' -H 'Content-Type: application/json' http://127.0.0.1:8182/cargo_crev_reviews

There are also a small number of GET requests for static files mostly to start the communication between the browser and the server.

GUI frontend - cargocrevreviews_wasm

This simple web app is the GUI frontend of the application cargo_crev_reviews.
It is strictly designed for use on desktops as it is a tool for programers. No need to do a mobile version. The response from the rpc server contains:

  1. response method name
  2. html template
  3. data

The method name is used to match and call the appropriate function.
The html template must be microXml compatible. The wasm code reads element by element and when finds a marker, inserts the data. I wanted the html template to be complete with some sample texts. So the markers are added in front of the element or attribute they are meant to replace.

common structs - common_mod.rs

Common structures between backend and frontend. It is kind of a contract for communication.
All in 100% rust language. One automation task keeps in sync the backend and frontend module.
TODO: I have a problem when serialize and deserialize structs. Most of the time I need then name of the field. Because with the name i can bind in different scenarios. Using structs I don't have the name of the field at runtime. I think I will ditch most of the structs to have just a plain old flat text. Inside that text every field will have a slice and a name. And I can then use that in runtime for bindings.

Code-flow

Everything is compiled into one single executable binary for Linux: cargo_crev_reviews.
First it opens the default browser with xdg-open on http://127.0.0.1:8182/cargo_crev_reviews/index.html.
If your WSL2 does not have yet a default browser run this:

bash ln -s "/mnt/c/Program Files/Mozilla Firefox/firefox.exe" /usr/bin/browser_in_win export BROWSER='/usr/bin/browser_in_win'

The command ln -sf is permanent and persistent. It makes a symbolic link file that stays there forever. But export BROWSER= is NOT persistent. You need to add this command to ~/.bashrc that runs it on every start of terminal.

In the next millisecond the web server starts listening to 127.0.0.1 port 8182.
The first set of requests are GET and response is "static" files embedded in files_mod.rs

  1. browser request for /cargo_crev_reviews/index.html is GET, the response is html text file embedded in files_mod.rs in the function: index_html()
    This html is just an empty shell that gets the css and wasm code. There is no real content inside. This concept is Single-page application SPA.
  2. index.html requests: 3 css files, pkg/cargo_crev_reviews.js, pkg/cargo_crev_reviews_bg.wasm, "favicon" icons/icon-032.png. All these requests are GET and responses come from files_mod.rs functions, some are text files and others are base64 files.
  3. the browser imports the wasm module and starts the init function that requests rpc_review_list. This responds with: methodname, pagehtml and data.
  4. wasm (inside the browser) is rust code. First it matches methodname and calls the appropriate function. It processes the pagehtml with the data and inserts it into index.html (the empty shell).
  5. the browser renders our first page. Hooray!
  6. the user click on some button.
  7. the macro on_click! or row_on_click! hides the ugly rust code behind the definition of an event handler in web_sys and calls a function
  8. wasm creates a rpc request and sends/POST to the server
  9. the request is POST, the server first matches the method_name and calls the appropriate function. The function processes the call and prepares some data. It loads the page html template.
  10. The response contains the html to be rendered and data to be inserted in this html before rendering.

cargo-crev integration

The cargo-crev project contains many crates. The crates crev-lib and crev-data are libraries for integration. All the code working with crev is encapsulated in the crev_mod.rs module.

cargo registry

The cargo application is essential for work with the rust language. It maintains a local cargo registry cache. The registry index is git fetched from github. Path to an index file:
~\.cargo\registry\index\github.com-1ecc6299db9ec823\cache\re\ad\reader_for_microxml
The content of this file is roughly:

yaml bc688d353fc7c7a2f3f1f5fed9a27fc1773fc710 1.0.0 { "name": "reader_for_microxml", "vers": "1.0.0", "deps": [], "cksum": "623616f68a6441e2f61aa01c9bbcf76f4c9989328e0e10ab747e936718791912", "features": {}, "yanked": true, "links": null } 1.1.11 { "name": "reader_for_microxml", "vers": "1.1.11", "deps": [], "cksum": "fd50abb1f0d11a59ebe6d3f31446e4af8d0f8a7df668034b6c9b94453fa30c42", "features": {}, "yanked": true, "links": null }

Cargo also downloads from crates.io the complete source code for every dependency in the path ~/.cargo/registry/src/github.com-1ecc6299db9ec823/. Crates.io guarantees the source code for a crate+version cannot be altered or deleted. We know it will never change, so we can review exactly this local code with confidence.

cargo crev reviews and advisory

We live in times of danger with supply chain attacks.
It is recommended to always use cargo-crev
to verify the trustworthiness of each of your dependencies.
Please, spread this info.
You can also read reviews quickly on the web:
https://web.crev.dev/rust-reviews/crates/

open-source free and free as a beer

My open-source projects are free and free as a beer (MIT license).
I just love programming.
But I need also to drink. If you find my projects and tutorials helpful,
please buy me a beer donating on my paypal.
You know the price of a beer in your local bar ;-)
So I can drink a free beer for your health :-)
Na zdravje ! 🍻