Using Web Assembly with Rust

Creative Commons Photo by Alden Jewell

What is Web Assembly?

More formal definitions likely exist, but to me, Web Assembly (abbreviated to wasm) is basically creating a foreign function interface (ffi) to a low-level C++, Rust or other language (aka Native code) library into a web site. Basically, you create an api in your favorite language, run a command line product to compile some of your code into JavaScript and other parts into an assembled api called a .wasm file. This means that instead of running interpreted JavaScript code, your product can run much faster server-based code as well.

While there is much more to it, I recommend exploring the documentation for more details. A Web Assembly stan would probably speak to its flexibility, power and easy integration into Node as other solid advantages. It also doesn’t hurt that you can hide your web-based code in a binary instead of having your naked JavaScript out there for everyone to steal. Personally, I like that I can decide how much native and how much web I want to put into a project.

What do you need to build wasm in Rust?

I will get right to it. You need:

• Rust
• wasm-pack (just use cargo install wasm-pack) in your terminal.
• to add wasm-bindgen to your Cargo.toml as a dependency.