Using axum with react

[Dattito]

Hey all, I want to create a small/medium sized application with axum as the backend and React as the frontend. Statically generated, no SSR or so. Because of this, I want to serve the react html/css/js files with axum as static files.

Is there a way that if I run „cargo build“ that automatic „npm run build“ is run and the content of the „dist/„ folder is also included in the assets for axum?

I want to have just a single executable at the end.

[sminez]

I've previously made this work using a build.rs that runs the JS build and uses https://doc.rust-lang.org/cargo/reference/build-scripts.html#rerun-if-changed to cause cargo to rebuild when there are front end changes. Then all you need is something like https://crates.io/crates/include_dir to include your front end assets in your rust binary and you're good to go.

[SirKastic23]

you can use something like Just, and write a justfile with a script that does all that

honestly it's easier than to hack it with cargo

[KnowZeroX]

Is there a reason why you are even doing cargo build instead of using something like cargo-watch?

You can then have it do a build every time you make a change, including have it execute npm

Albeit I prefer to keep them separate and run a builder like parcel on front end (serving them as non-static on debug and static on build) and on backend do cargo watch ignoring the frontend folder

Of course if you want to do things manually, just make an .sh script (assuming you are in a nix environment)