Book Image

Asynchronous Programming in Rust

By : Carl Fredrik Samson
5 (2)
Book Image

Asynchronous Programming in Rust

5 (2)
By: Carl Fredrik Samson

Overview of this book

Step into the world of asynchronous programming with confidence by conquering the challenges of unclear concepts with this hands-on guide. Using functional examples, this book simplifies the trickiest concepts, exploring goroutines, fibers, futures, and callbacks to help you navigate the vast Rust async ecosystem with ease. You’ll start by building a solid foundation in asynchronous programming and explore diverse strategies for modeling program flow. The book then guides you through concepts like epoll, coroutines, green threads, and callbacks using practical examples. The final section focuses on Rust, examining futures, generators, and the reactor-executor pattern. You’ll apply your knowledge to create your own runtime, solidifying expertise in this dynamic domain. Throughout the book, you’ll not only gain proficiency in Rust's async features but also see how Rust models asynchronous program flow. By the end of the book, you'll possess the knowledge and practical skills needed to actively contribute to the Rust async ecosystem.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
Free Chapter
1
Part 1:Asynchronous Programming Fundamentals
5
Part 2:Event Queues and Green Threads
8
Part 3:Futures and async/await in Rust

An example of hand-written coroutines

The example we’ll use going forward is a simplified version of Rust’s asynchronous model. We’ll create and implement the following:

  • Our own simplified Future trait
  • A simple HTTP client that can only make GET requests
  • A task we can pause and resume implemented as a state machine
  • Our own simplified async/await syntax called coroutine/wait
  • A homemade preprocessor to transform our coroutine/wait functions into state machines the same way async/await is transformed

So, to actually demystify coroutines, futures, and async/await, we will have to make some compromises. If we didn’t, we’d end up re-implementing everything that is async/await and futures in Rust today, which is too much for just understanding the underlying techniques and concepts.

Therefore, our example will do the following:

  • Avoid error handling. If anything fails, we panic.
  • Be specific and not generic. Creating...