Lobsters Client and TUI in Rust

• Issue Tracker
• Download
• Build
• Testing
• Contributing

What

This is a pair of Rust crates. One implements an asynchronous HTTP client for the Lobsters website, and other websites running its code. The other implements a terminal user interface using the client. Lobsters is a friendly programming oriented link sharing community.

This client crate allows the following actions to be performed:

• Fetch stories
• Fetch comments on stories
• Post comments and replies
• Login

Why

It did this mostly to practice building asynchronous HTTP clients in Rust and gain more experience with the async ecosystem. Then I needed something to test the client so I built the UI. You can read more about building the client and TUI on my blog.

How

The lobsters-cli crate in this repo provides an example of the crate in use. You can try out out by downloading a pre-compiled binary, available below.

Keyboard bindings

The TUI uses the following key bindings:

• j or ↓ — Move cursor down
• k or ↑ — Move cursor up
• h or ← — Scroll view left
• l or → — Scroll view right
• Enter — Open story URL in browser
• c — Open story comments in browser
• q or Esc — Quit

Download

lobsters is a single binary available for a handful of platforms. To download the latest release do the following:

• FreeBSD 12.0 x86_64:
  • curl -L https://releases.wezm.net/lobsters/lobsters-0.1.0-x86_64-unknown-freebsd.tar.gz | tar zxf -
• Linux x86_64:
  • curl -L https://releases.wezm.net/lobsters/lobsters-0.1.0-x86_64-unknown-linux-musl.tar.gz | tar zxf -
• macOS x86_64:
  • curl -L https://releases.wezm.net/lobsters/lobsters-0.1.0-x86_64-apple-darwin.tar.gz | tar zxf -
• NetBSD 8.0 x86_64:
  • curl -L https://releases.wezm.net/lobsters/lobsters-0.1.0-x86_64-unknown-netbsd.tar.gz | tar zxf -
• OpenBSD 6.5 x86_64:
  • curl -L https://releases.wezm.net/lobsters/lobsters-0.1.0-x86_64-unknown-openbsd.tar.gz | tar zxf -
• Raspberry Pi:
  • curl -L https://releases.wezm.net/lobsters/lobsters-0.1.0-arm-unknown-linux-gnueabihf.tar.gz | tar zxf -

The binary should be in your current directory and can be run as follows:

./lobsters

Feel free to move it elsewhere (~/.local/bin for example).

Building

Build Status:

• Debian:
• FreeBSD:

From Source

Note: You will need the Rust compiler installed.

git clone https://git.sr.ht/~wezm/lobsters
cargo install --path lobsters/lobsters-cli

Cross-Compiling

There is a script that will build binaries for several platforms. You will need an arm-linux-gnueabihf and musl toolchain installed as well as those rustup targets installed.

./build-all-platforms

Known Limitations

• Support for 2FA login is not implemented

Testing

Run the test suite:

cargo test

Contributing

If you have code or patches you wish to contribute, the preferred mechanism is a git pull request. Push your changes to a git repository somewhere (Sourcehut, GitHub, GitLab, whatever). Ensure that contributions don't break the tests and add new ones when appropriate.

Assuming you have followed the build steps above you would do the following to push to your own fork on Sourcehut, change the git URL to match wherever your forked repo is:

git remote rename origin upstream
git remote add origin git@git.sr.ht:~yourname/lobsters
git push -u origin master

Then generate the pull request:

git fetch upstream master
git request-pull -p upstream/master origin

And copy-paste the result into a plain-text email to wes@wezm.net.

You may alternately use a patch-based approach as described on https://git-send-email.io.

License

This project is dual licenced under:

• Apache License, Version 2.0 (LICENSE-APACHE OR http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0)
• MIT license (LICENSE-MIT OR http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT)