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How to Build a Note Taking Command Line Interface (CLI) With Rust: Part 1
Update: Part 2 is now available
Last week I wrote about my first Rust application. After making it through some of the initial syntax hurdles, I’m feeling good about the language. This post is the first of a series of posts that will cover how to build a note taking application with Rust.
The ultimate goal is to give readers enough knowledge to build their own note-taking application similar to engram.
The content expects the reader to have some existing programming knowledge, but can be completely new to Rust. Each part of the series will result in a functional and useful application that will be built upon in future posts.
I strongly recommend typing out the code that you see, rather than just copying and pasting the entire block. This is one of the most effective ways to get a better understanding.
Getting Started
Install rust with the command below found from their Getting started page
Install Rust
curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | shCreate New Rust Project
cargo new notescargo is the Rust package manager. There are several commands that it supports and this article will introduce a couple of them. cargo new creates a new project (and folder) named notes (or whatever else you specify) in your current directory.
src/main.rs includes a dead simple “Hello World” application.
Cargo.toml is called the manifest. See The Cargo Book for an in depth look at what is supported here. We only need to make one small tweak here to add a dependency, so don’t worry too much about understanding everything.
.gitignore conveniently ignores the target folder by default from git.
Run the hello world application
cargo runThe cargo run command builds and runs the current package. After making changes in this tutorial you will use it to run and test those changes. After running it once, you will see a couple more files and folders appear.
