Crate natrix

Introduction

Natrix is a Rust-first frontend framework. Where other frameworks aim to bring React-style development to rust, Natrix embraces Rust’s strengths—leveraging smart pointers, derive macros, the builder pattern, and other idiomatic Rust features to create a truly native experience.

A Simple Example

A simple counter in Natrix looks like this:

#[derive(Component)]
struct Counter(usize);

impl Component for Counter {
    fn render() -> impl Element<Self::Data> {
        e::button()
            .text(|ctx: R<Self>| *ctx.0)
            .on::<events::Click>(|ctx: &mut S<Self>, _| {
                *ctx.0 += 1;
            })
    }
}

See the book for more information

Standout features

• ✅ No macro DSL – Macro-based DSLs break formatting & Rust Analyzer support. Natrix avoids them completely for a smoother dev experience.
• ✅ Derive macros for reactive state – No need for useSignal everywhere, state is directly tied to Rust’s type system.
• ✅ Callbacks use references to state – Instead of closures capturing state setters, Natrix callbacks take a reference to the state, which better aligns with Rust’s ownership model.
• ✅ Fine-grained reactivity – Natrix only updates what’s necessary, minimizing re-renders and maximizing performance.
• ✅ Smart feature selection - Natrix will automatically use nightly-only optimizations if possible without needing a explicit nightly flag.
• ✅ Borrow Safety - We only use one RefCell per component instance, all other state is managed within the rust borrowing rules, which gives stronger guarantees of no panics as well as performance.

Design Goals

• Developer experience first – Natrix is designed to feel natural for Rust developers.
• Idiomatic Rust – We use Rust-native features & patterns, not what worked for js.
• Stop porting JS to Rust – Rust is an amazing language, let’s build a frontend framework that actually feels like Rust.

Modules

async_utils

Async utils

callbacks

Implementations of various traits for closures.

component

Component traits

element

Implementation of the Element trait for various abstract types.

events

What kind of event to give to the handlers

html_elements

Implemention of html elements, as well as helper constructors.

prelude

Public export of everything.

state

Types for handling the component state

Macros

guard_option

Get a guard handle that can be used to retrive the Some variant of a option without having to use .unwrap. Should be used to achive find-grained reactivity (internally this uses .watch on .is_some())

guard_result

Get a guard handle that can be used to retrive the Ok variant of a option without having to use .unwrap, or the Err variant.

Functions

set_panic_hook

Set the panic hook to mark that a panic has happened