Ripress

An Express.js-inspired web framework for Rust

Please star the repo if you like it, so that I know someone is using it.

What is Ripress?

Ripress is an Express.js-inspired web framework for Rust that combines the familiar developer experience of Express with the performance and safety of Rust. Built on top of Hyper and Tokio, Ripress provides a simple and intuitive API for building fast, reliable web applications.

Why Choose Ripress?

🚀 Performance

• Ripress is just ~6–7% slower than Actix-Web (one of the fastest Rust web frameworks), even though performance hasn’t been the main focus yet.
• Nearly 10x faster than Express.js

💡 Developer Experience

• Express.js-familiar API that Rust developers will love
• In many cases, even simpler than Express.js
• Comprehensive error handling and type safety

⚡ Modern Foundation

• Async/await support with Tokio
• HTTP/2 support via Hyper (enabled by default, configurable via App::enable_http2 and App::http2_config)

Table of Contents

• Overview
• Features
• Goals
• Installation
• Examples
• Documentation
• Changelog

Overview

Ripress is a web framework inspired by Express.js, designed to bring the familiar and intuitive Express.js developer experience to the Rust ecosystem while maintaining Rust's performance and safety guarantees.

Features

• Express-like routing with App and Router
• Async handler support built on tokio
• Pre and post middleware for request/response processing
• Built-in middleware including CORS, logging, compression, and file uploads
• Request/response objects with JSON, text, and form parsing
• Type-safe handler signatures for better developer experience
• WebSocket support via the wynd crate (with "with-wynd" feature)
• Extensible architecture via custom middleware

Optional Features

Ripress includes several optional features that can be enabled to reduce compile time and binary size:

• compression - Enables response compression middleware (gzip/deflate) using flate2
• file-upload - Enables file upload middleware for handling multipart form data using uuid
• logger - Enables request/response logging middleware using tracing
• with-wynd - Enables WebSocket support via the wynd crate

To enable features, add them to your Cargo.toml:

[dependencies]
ripress = { version = "*", features = ["compression", "file-upload", "logger", "with-wynd"] }

Goals

• Provide an intuitive and simple API like Express.js
• Focus on developer experience first; performance optimizations will come later
• Prioritize ease of use over low-level control initially
• Include built-in middleware for common web development needs

Getting Started

The easiest way to get started is with the HexStack CLI.

HexStack is a project scaffolding tool (similar to create-t3-app) that lets you spin up new Rust web projects in seconds. With just a few selections, you can choose:

Backend: Ripress, Wynd, or both

Frontend: React, Svelte, or none

Extras: Out-of-the-box HTTP + WebSocket support

This means you can quickly bootstrap a full-stack project (Rust backend + modern frontend) or just a backend-only Ripress/Wynd project.

To create a new project with Ripress:

hexstack new my-project --template ripress

Alternatively, you can create a new project manually by running the following commands:

cargo new my-project
cd my-project
cargo add ripress
cargo add tokio --features macros,rt-multi-thread

To enable optional features (compression, file upload, logger, WebSocket support):

cargo add ripress --features compression,file-upload,logger,with-wynd

This will create a new project with Ripress and all optional features enabled.

Basic Example

use ripress::{
    app::{App, Http2Config},
    context::{HttpRequest, HttpResponse},
    types::RouterFns,
};

#[tokio::main]
async fn main() {
    let mut app = App::new();

    app.get("/", handler);

    // Optional: disable HTTP/2 and serve only HTTP/1.1
    // app.enable_http2(false);

    // Optional: advanced HTTP/2 tuning
    // app.http2_config(Http2Config {
    //     http2_only: false,
    //     max_concurrent_streams: Some(100),
    //     ..Default::default()
    // });

    app.listen(3000, || {
        println!("Server is running on port 3000");
    })
    .await;
}

async fn handler(_req: HttpRequest, res: HttpResponse) -> HttpResponse {
    res.status(200)
        .json(json!({"message": "Welcome to Ripress!"}))
}

WebSocket Example

Note: This example requires the with-wynd feature to be enabled. See Optional Features for details.

use ripress::{app::App, types::RouterFns};
use wynd::wynd::Wynd;

#[tokio::main]
async fn main() {
    let mut app = App::new();
    let mut wynd = Wynd::new();

    // HTTP route
    app.get("/", |_, res| async move {
        res.ok().text("Hello, World!")
    });

    // WebSocket connection handler
    wynd.on_connection(|conn| async move {
        conn.on_text(|event, _| async move {
            println!("Received: {}", event.data);
        });
    });

    // Mount WebSocket at /ws path
    app.use_wynd("/ws", wynd.handler());

    app.listen(3000, || {
        println!("Server running on http://localhost:3000");
        println!("WebSocket available at ws://localhost:3000/ws");
    })
    .await;
}

View more basic examples in Examples dir. View full blown code examples here.

Middleware Example

Note: This example requires the file-upload feature to be enabled. See Optional Features for details.

use ripress::{
    app::App,
    middlewares::{file_upload::file_upload},
    types::RouterFns,
};

#[tokio::main]
async fn main() {
    let mut app = App::new();

    // Add middleware (pre and post)
    app.use_cors(None)                                    // Pre-middleware
        .use_pre_middleware("/upload", file_upload(None)) // Pre-middleware (requires file-upload feature)
        .use_post_middleware("/api/", |req, res| async {  // Post-middleware
            println!("API response logged: {} {}", req.method, req.path);
            (req, None)
        })
        .use_rate_limiter(None);                          // Pre-middleware

    app.listen(3000, || {
        println!("Server running on port 3000");
    }).await;
}

Learn more about middleware in the Middleware Guide.

Get Started

Ready to build something amazing? Jump into our Installation Guide or explore the framework on GitHub.

You can also check out the complete API documentation on Docs.rs.

Documentation

• Getting Started Guide
• Middleware Guide
• WebSocket Guide
• API Reference

Changelog

View Changelog

Contributing

We welcome contributions! Please see our Contributing Guide for details.

Ripress v1.0.1 - Production Ready ✨