Rust for NodeJS developers (IV) - SQLx CLI
Captain's log, stardate d429.y41/AB
Welcome to Part 4 of our "Rust for Node.js Developers" series!
If you missed our previous article on setting up a Docker development environment, you can catch up here.
In this article, we'll explore SQLx - a robust database toolkit for Rust.
According to its official repository, SQLx is:
An async, pure Rust SQL crate featuring compile-time checked queries without a DSL.
What makes SQLx stand out?
Let's get started by setting up a PostgreSQL database using SQLx!
Start by adding a Postgres service to your development environment:
.dockerdev/compose.yml:
name: rust-for-nodejs-developers
services:
backend-app:
command: ["cargo", "watch", "-x", "run"]
restart: unless-stopped
tty: true
environment:
DATABASE_URL: postgresql://root:password@db:5432/rocket
ROCKET_ADDRESS: 0.0.0.0
build:
context: ../
dockerfile: ./.dockerdev/Dockerfile
volumes:
- ../.:/app
- backend-target:/app/target
- backend-cargo:/usr/local/cargo
ports:
- 8000:8000
db:
image: postgres
restart: unless-stopped
environment:
POSTGRES_USER: root
POSTGRES_PASSWORD: password
POSTGRES_DB: rocket
POSTGRES_HOST: db
POSTGRES_PORT: 5432
ports:
- 5432:5432
volumes:
- dbvolume:/var/lib/postgresql/data
command: ["postgres", "-c", "log_statement=all"]
volumes:
backend-target:
backend-cargo:
dbvolume:
Enhance your Docker environment with the SQLx CLI by adding the following to your Dockerfile (remember to rebuild your Docker image afterward):
FROM rust:1.81.0
WORKDIR /app
COPY . .
RUN cargo install cargo-watch &&\
# Install SQLx CLI tool for database management
cargo install sqlx-cli --no-default-features --features native-tls,postgres &&\
# Update package list
apt-get update &&\
# Install PostgreSQL development files required for SQLx
apt-get install -y libpq-dev=15.6-0+deb12u1 --no-install-recommends &&\
# Clean up apt cache to reduce image size
apt-get clean &&\
# Remove package lists to reduce image size
rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*
EXPOSE 8000
CMD ["cargo", "watch", "-x", "run"]
Update your Makefile to simplify working with SQLx:
Makefile.toml:
[env]
# Define reusable Docker commands
DOCKER_SCRIPT = "docker compose -f .dockerdev/compose.yml"
DOCKER_SCRIPT_RUN = "${DOCKER_SCRIPT} run --remove-orphans --rm backend-app"
# Development task
[tasks.develop]
script = "${DOCKER_SCRIPT} up"
# SQLx CLI helper
[tasks.sqlx]
script = "${DOCKER_SCRIPT_RUN} sqlx ${@}"
# One-time database setup
[tasks.setup]
script = [
"cargo make sqlx database create",
"cargo make sqlx migrate run"
]
Create our first database migration by running cargo make sqlx migrate add -r init.
The -r flag creates a reversible migration.
This command will generate two files in the /migrations/ directory with names similar to 20250215155515_init.up.sql and 20250215155515_init.down.sql.
We'll modify these files to define our initial database structure.
/migrations/20250215155515_init.up.sql
CREATE TABLE users (
id UUID DEFAULT gen_random_uuid() PRIMARY KEY,
username VARCHAR (50) UNIQUE NOT NULL,
email VARCHAR (50) UNIQUE NOT NULL
);
/migrations/20250215155515_init.down.sql
DROP TABLE IF EXISTS "users" CASCADE;
You can now initialize your database by running cargo make setup (make sure your app is already running with cargo make develop).
You can find the complete code for this tutorial in this branch.
In our next article, we'll learn how to connect our application to the database using SQLx.
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