// the find
thruster-rs/Thruster
A fast, middleware based, web framework written in Rust
Thruster is a Koa/Express-style middleware-chain web framework for Rust, built on top of Hyper or Actix as the actual HTTP engine. It's for Rust developers who prefer the middleware-stack mental model over Actix's actor model or Axum's extractor pattern. The framework is honest about its niche status in the README, which is rare and refreshing.
The swappable backend design is genuinely useful — you can start with the homegrown server and switch to Hyper or Actix without rewriting your middleware. The built-in testing utilities let you call handlers directly without spinning up an actual server, which most Rust frameworks make awkward. No unsafe code is a meaningful claim given how many Rust web libs reach for it for performance. The middleware model is more direct than Actix's guard/scope system for common patterns like IP filtering or auth.
Effectively a solo project with one maintainer, last pushed October 2024, and under 50 forks — this is not a bet-your-startup framework. The ecosystem around it is thin: no mature auth library, no ORM integration, no active community producing middleware packages. The `#[middleware_fn]` proc macro and `m![]` combinator add friction that Axum's tower middleware avoids entirely. At 1k stars it hasn't crossed the threshold where you'd trust it for production without reading the source yourself.