isabella232 / neon

A safe Rust abstraction layer for native Node.js modules.

Neon

A safe Rust abstraction layer for native Node.js modules.

Neon protects all handles to the JavaScript heap, even when they're allocated on the Rust stack, ensuring that objects are always safely tracked by the garbage collector.

Getting started

Install neon-cli as a global npm package:

npm install -g neon-cli

To create a new Neon project, use neon new:

neon new my-project

This will ask you a few questions and then generate a project skeleton for you. Follow the instructions from there to build and run your project!

Requirements

You'll need the following on all OSes:

• Node v4 or later;
• Rust v1.7 or later;
• multirust (only required for Neon projects that override the system default Rust).

For Mac OS X, you'll need:

• OS X 10.7 or later;
• XCode.

A Taste...

A Neon function takes a Call object and produces a Rust Result that's either a JS value or the Throw constant (meaning a JS exception was thrown). The Call object provides access to a memory management scope, which safely manages the rooting of handles to heap objects:

fn make_an_array(call: Call) -> JsResult<JsArray> {
    let scope = call.scope; // the current scope for rooting handles
    let array: Handle<JsArray> = JsArray::new(scope, 3);
    try!(array.set(0, JsInteger::new(scope, 9000)));
    try!(array.set(1, JsObject::new(scope)));
    try!(array.set(2, JsNumber::new(scope, 3.14159)));
    Ok(array)
}

For a more complete demonstration, try building a hello world with neon new, or check out the slightly bigger word count demo.

Get Involved

The Neon community is just getting started and there's tons of fun to be had. Come play! :)

The Rust Bridge community Slack is open to all; use the Slackin app to receive an invitation.

License

Licensed under either of

• Apache License, Version 2.0 (LICENSE-APACHE or http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0)
• MIT license (LICENSE-MIT or http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT)

at your option.