rust-pastebin

Async REST API for creating and sharing text pastes — built in Rust with a clear layered architecture, typed SQL, and OpenAPI docs out of the box.

A portfolio backend focused on production-style practices: separation of concerns, background jobs, structured errors, and observability — not just CRUD.

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Tech stack

Layer	Choice	Role
Runtime	Tokio	Async I/O and background tasks
HTTP	Actix Web 4	High-performance REST API
Database	PostgreSQL + SQLx	Connection pool, migrations, compile-time SQL
IDs	UUID v7	Time-sortable unique identifiers
Docs	utoipa + Swagger UI	OpenAPI from Rust types
Errors	thiserror	Typed domain/API errors
Logging	tracing	Request-scoped instrumentation
Config	dotenvy	Environment-based configuration

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Features

• Create pastes with title, content, and language hint
• Optional TTL — expires_in_hours (default: 30 days)
• One-time pastes — deleted after the first successful read
• View counter — incremented atomically on read
• Pagination — limit / offset for listing
• Partial updates — PATCH with coalesce semantics
• Background cleanup — expired rows removed every 10 minutes
• Auto migrations — applied on startup via SQLx
• Interactive API docs — Swagger UI at /swagger/

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Project structure

src/
├── main.rs                 # Server bootstrap, cleanup task, Swagger
├── lib.rs                  # Module tree
├── handlers/               # Actix route handlers
├── services/               # PasteService, CleanUpService
├── repositories/           # SQLx queries
├── models/                 # DTOs & response types
├── db/                     # PgPool + migrations
├── error.rs                # AppError (thiserror + ResponseError)
├── env.rs                  # HOST / PORT / DATABASE_URL
└── types.rs                # Shared aliases (Database, AppResult, Id)
migrations/                 # SQLx SQL migrations

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Getting started

Prerequisites

• Rust (edition 2024 toolchain)
• PostgreSQL
• sqlx-cli (optional, for manual migrations)

Configuration

Copy env vars into .env (gitignored):

HOST=localhost
PORT=8080
DATABASE_URL=postgresql://user:password@localhost:5432/pastebin

Run

# Create DB (example)
createdb pastebin

# Start API — migrations run automatically on boot
cargo run

Server listens on HOST:PORT. Open Swagger at /swagger/.

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What I’d improve next

Honest backlog — useful both as a learning path and as talking points in an interview:

• Rate limiting and request size limits
• Integration tests against a test Postgres
• Docker Compose for one-command local setup

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License

MIT (or as preferred).