Pretiola

A lightweight Rust web framework for the Sr. Dolores Foundation charity website (srdolores-foundation.it). Built on Actix-web with Tera templates and Tailwind CSS, deployed to Fly.io via Docker.

Architecture

Request → Actix-web server (port 8080)
            ├── /                  → index handler (Tera render)
            ├── /{page}.html       → dynamic_page handler (Tera render)
            ├── /sitemap.xml       → auto-generated from template list
            ├── /static/**         → static file serving
            ├── /pictures/**       → alias for /static/pictures
            └── /**                → fallback static serving (robots.txt, etc.)

The entire Rust backend is three files:

File	Role
src/main.rs	Entry point. Reads PORT env var (default 8080), binds listener.
src/startup.rs	Configures Actix-web app: Tera init, route registration, static file serving.
src/routes.rs	Three handlers: index, dynamic_page, sitemap. All template rendering goes through render_page().

Convention: To add a new page, create templates/my_page.html — it's automatically routable at /my_page.html and included in the sitemap. Partials (navbar, footer) are excluded from the sitemap via the PARTIALS constant.

Project Structure

├── src/                  # Rust source (3 files)
├── templates/            # Tera HTML templates (9 pages + 2 partials)
├── static/
│   ├── css/              # Tailwind source + compiled output
│   └── pictures/         # Source images + optimized/ (generated, gitignored)
├── scripts/
│   └── optimize-images.js  # Sharp-based image pipeline (WebP + JPEG, 3 sizes)
├── tests/                # Integration tests (health check, all pages, sitemap, 404, HEAD)
├── Dockerfile            # Multi-stage: Rust builder + Node asset-builder + Debian runtime
├── fly.toml              # Fly.io deployment config (yyz region)
└── docker-compose.yml

Development

Prerequisites: Rust toolchain, Node.js 20+

# Install Node dependencies (Tailwind CLI, Sharp)
npm install

# Build CSS
npm run build:css

# Build optimized images (WebP + JPEG at 400w/800w/1200w)
npm run build:images

# Run the server
cargo run
# → http://localhost:8080

# Run tests
cargo test

Deployment

Deployed to Fly.io. The Dockerfile handles everything:

1. builder stage — compiles the Rust binary (with dependency caching)
2. asset-builder stage — runs npm run build:css and npm run build:images
3. runtime stage — Debian slim with just the binary, templates, and static assets

fly deploy

Templates

All pages use Tera's {% include %} for navbar.html and footer.html. Templates receive two context variables:

• page_name — the page slug (e.g., "index", "who_we_are")
• current_year — for copyright footers

Image Pipeline

scripts/optimize-images.js processes all images in static/pictures/:

• Generates 400w, 800w, 1200w variants in both WebP and JPEG
• Prefers *_sharpen.{png,jpg} as high-res source when available
• Output goes to static/pictures/optimized/ (gitignored, built in Docker)
• Templates use <picture> with srcset for responsive serving