Lars Portfolio

A Rust-first portfolio website for Lars Nieuwenhuis. The app uses Axum, Askama, SQLx, PostgreSQL, Tokio, secure cookie sessions, CSRF checks, and small vanilla CSS/JS.

Stack

• Rust with Axum for routing and the web server
• Askama for type-safe server-rendered templates
• SQLx and PostgreSQL for projects
• First-login admin setup with Argon2 password storage
• Handcrafted CSS and a small JavaScript file for public UI polish
• Railway-ready build and run settings

Environment

Copy .env.example to .env and fill in:

DATABASE_URL=postgres://postgres:postgres@localhost:5432/lars_portfolio
PGUSER=postgres
PGPASSWORD=postgres
ADMIN_USERNAME=lars
SESSION_SECRET=replace_with_64_char_random_secret
BASE_URL=http://localhost:3000
RUST_LOG=info

PORT is read automatically when present. Locally, the app defaults to 3000 and listens on 0.0.0.0:3000.

DATABASE_URL is the base PostgreSQL connection string. When PGUSER or PGPASSWORD are present, the app injects them into DATABASE_URL before connecting.

Optional public GitHub and LinkedIn links are intentionally blank in src/config.rs. Add real public URLs there when ready.

Local Setup

1. Install Rust.

2. Start PostgreSQL. With Docker available, run:

   docker compose up -d

3. Copy the example environment file:

   Copy-Item .env.example .env

4. Set a long random SESSION_SECRET.

5. Run the app:

   cargo run

6. Open http://localhost:3000.

The app runs embedded SQLx migrations on startup and seeds safe draft projects only when the database is empty.

Admin

Visit /admin/login. The first time, the form creates the admin password and stores a salted Argon2 hash in PostgreSQL. After that, the same screen becomes the normal login.

The default admin username is lars unless ADMIN_USERNAME is set. There is no default password.

The admin area can create, edit, publish or unpublish, reorder, and delete projects. JavaScript is not required for those workflows.

Railway Deploy

1. Create a new Railway project.

2. Add a PostgreSQL service.

3. Import this GitHub repository.

4. Set these environment variables on the app service:

   DATABASE_URL=...
   PGUSER=...
   PGPASSWORD=...
   ADMIN_USERNAME=lars
   SESSION_SECRET=...
   BASE_URL=https://your-domain.example
   RUST_LOG=info

5. Deploy. railway.toml uses Railpack, builds with cargo build --release, copies the compiled binary to Railpack's ./bin runtime path, starts ./bin/lars-portfolio, and checks /health.

6. Open /admin/login on the deployed domain and create the admin password.

Useful Checks

cargo fmt --check
cargo clippy --all-targets --all-features
cargo test