Rust + JavaScript: a Love Story

What’s Wasm?

WebAssembly (WASM for short) is a “binary instruction format” that can run natively in your browser, making it just the fourth language to claim that title, joining HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

However, WASM is not something that most of us will want to write by hand; that’s why it was intended as a compilation target for other programming languages. The goal is to write in your favorite compiled language and then output a .wasm module that can be directly executed in the browser (or Deno and Node!).

This is a pretty big deal!

WebAssembly modules are often used for cross-platform mobility or to off-load intensive computations away from JavaScript to a better-suited language.

Let’s write and run our first WebAssembly module using Rust and wasm-pack.

Prerequisites

Install Rust and Cargo

For macOS, Linux

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf <https://sh.rustup.rs> | sh

For Windows

rustup-init.exe

Install wasm-pack
```
cargo install wasm-pack
```

Scaffolding a Project Using Cargo

After ensuring you have Rust, Cargo, and wasm-pack installed, let’s create a new Rust project with Cargo.

cargo new --lib hello-wasm

This command scaffolds a new Rust library in the hello-wasm directory. Cargo provides us with a src/lib.rs file and a Cargo.toml (think package.json equivalent). lib.rs will contain a boilerplate Rust unit test, we can go ahead and delete everything in this file.

Using `wasm-bindgen` and `wasm-pack` to Compile Rust Functions to WASM

Next, let’s get our Cargo.toml set up.

[package]
name = "hello-wasm"
version = "0.1.0"
edition = "2021"

[lib]
crate-type = ["cdylib"]

[dependencies]
wasm-bindgen = "0.2"

We need to add two things here: the [lib] section and the wasm-bindgen dependency.

The [lib].crate-type directive helps tip off Cargo that we might be building for a WASM target and helps it pass the correct flags when we do so.

You will see where we use wasm-bindgen in a second, but it’s a key library that enables the translation between Rust types and JavaScript types, among other things. You can read more about the specifics in their docs.

With our Cargo.toml in order, let’s open up src/lib.rs and write some Rust code.

Using the wasm-bindgen attribute, we will write an add function that simply returns the sum of two integers.

// lib.rs
use wasm_bindgen::prelude::*;

#[wasm_bindgen]
pub fn add(a: i32, b: i32) -> i32 {
    a + b
}

Now that our Rust code is in place, we will use wasm-pack to compile our Rust into consumable WASM.

wasm-pack build --target web

You should see a new pkg directory with our .wasm module, a .js wrapper, and some other sundry files. Feel free to poke around to satisfy any curiosities.

With our built artifacts, we are ready to run WASM from the browser!

Importing and Calling WASM Functions from JavaScript

In the same hello-wasm directory, create a humble index.html and add an inline <script type="module"> in the <head>.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
  <head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8" />
    <title>Hello Wasm!</title>
    <script type="module"></script>
  </head>
  <body></body>
</html>

Next, we can import both the default export (I call it init) and our add function from the light JavaScript wrapper that was generated by wasm-pack. wasm-pack automatically adds a default export that is essentially glue code to load and instantiate our WASM module.

It’s critical that you call this default export before using the add function.

Then, we can call our add function and log the result.

wasm-pack generates .d.ts files by default. Depending on your tooling setup, this gives you autocomplete and type checking for our WASM functions 🤯.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
  <head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8" />
    <title>Hello Wasm!</title>
    <script type="module">
      import init, { add } from './pkg/hello_wasm.js'

      await init() // this loads and instantiates our WASM module
      console.log(add(1, 2)) // this calls our compiled Rust function!
    </script>
  </head>
  <body></body>
</html>

Now, run python3 -m http.server in this directory, load up localhost:8000, and pop open the developer tools.

If you see 3 in the console. we have had great success!

Serving index.html with a relatively modern HTTP server is crucial for loading our WASM module because the application/wasm MIME type must be supported. Opening our page from the file system will not work. If you have trouble with the Python server, check here or use an alternative server that you are comfortable with.

What Now?

WebAssembly opens up a new horizon of opportunities for web applications and you now have the super power of knowing how to use it!

To learn more about WASM, wasm-pack, and Rust, check out these resources:

See the final source code here.

If you have any questions or issues, feel free to reach out on my Twitter.