Like most programming languages, you’re free to use Rust to send and receive data over HTTP.
When youre building a web-based service, youll often need to integrate one or more services.
Youll often do so by sending them HTTP requests.
Rust has built-in functionality for HTTP operations.
There are also many libraries in the Rust ecosystem that help you interact with HTTP and build HTTP services.
Reqwest is the most popular among Rust developers.
Reqwest is a high-level client library that provides a simple and convenient API for making HTTP requests.
Reqwest provides functionality for sending requests and handling responses and errors.
It abstracts many details behind making an HTTP request and supports advanced features like asynchronous requests using thetokioruntime.
It also handles JSON deserialization, HTTP headers, connection timeouts, and SSL parameters.
Youll find the Reqwest library handy if youre new to Rust or lack experience with HTTP services.
To start with Reqwest, add the Reqwest andTokiolibraries to your projects dependencies.
Tokio is an asynchronous runtime library that interoperates with Reqwest.
you’re able to add these dependencies to yourCargo.tomlfile after creating a Rust project.
HTTP GET Requests With Reqwest
Youll make GET requests to retrieve data from a web server.
GET requests can retrieve HTML pages, JSON data, orbinary files like images or videos.
Reqwest lets you specify the URL endpoint as a string along with query parameters and headers for the request.
It calls thereqwestmodulesgetmethod and prints theresponses status codeand body.
The Reqwest library provides anErrortype that you’ve got the option to use to handle errors.
Additionally, HTTP status codes from the web server can provide information about the request’s status.
The function prints a message and the status code depending on the response to the server.
Sending HTTP POST Requests With Reqwest
Youll make HTTP POST requests to submit data to a server.
Theresponsevariable is the POST request builder.
Thepostmethod sends the POST request to the URL, and theheadermethod sets an HTTP header.
Thebodymethod sets the request body, and thesendmethod sends the request.
Headers contain additional information like authentication credentials or metadata about the requested content.
Handling headers and query parameters follows a similar process to sending post requests.
Create an instance of theheader::HeaderMaptype to add headers.
Theheaders_for_requestsfunction sends a GET request toexample.comwith multiple headers and query parameters.
It uses theheadersandquerymethods that take maps containing the headers and query parameters, respectively.
