Axum response codes

Simplifying error handling in Axum with Rust macros

Photo by David Pupăză on Unsplash

During the development of Vela's Rust backend, I've become acutely cognizant of the verbosity inherent in Axum's error handling mechanisms. This prolixity not only proves to be time-consuming but also diminishes some of the inherent pleasure derived from writing Rust code. The repetitive nature of error handling can often detract from the elegance and efficiency that Rust typically offers.

To mitigate this issue and streamline the development process, I went ahead and created a collection of dead-simple macros to streamline Axum’s error handling. After spending several hours refactoring each route in Vela’s codebase, I have to say: Rust macros are pretty sweet.

A typically endpoint went from this:

pub async fn endpoint(...) -> Result<..., (StatusCode, Json<ErrorResponse>)> {
    ...
	
    if ... {
        return Err(
            StatusCode::BAD_REQUEST,
	    Json(ErrorResponse(
                error: "Hey, don't do that"
	    ))
	);
    }
	
    ...
}

To this:

pub async fn endpoint(...) -> Result<..., (StatusCode, Json<ErrorResponse>)> {
    ...
	
    if ... {
        bad_request!("Hey, don't do that");
    }
	
    ...
}