A Progressive, Enterprise-Grade Server-Side Framework for Rust
Bringing the Developer Experience of NestJS & Angular to the unmatched performance of Tokio & Axum.
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In the web development world, frameworks like NestJS and Spring Boot popularized structured, maintainable, and modular backend architecture based on Inversion of Control (IoC) and Dependency Injection. However, as systems scale to millions of concurrent requests, single-threaded runtimes or heavy garbage-collected virtual machines face memory bloat, high latencies, and CPU limits.
Ferrox bridges the gap between rapid Developer Experience (DX) and extreme Rust performance.
Built on top of Axum and Tokio, Ferrox provides an out-of-the-box, opinionated architecture for building production-ready, highly testable, zero-trust microservices and monolithic web applications.
- 🛡️ Zero-Trust Security by Default: Built-in PASETO JWT translation, role guards, and HMAC webhook verification.
- ⚡ Cache Stampede Protection: Integrated
Singleflightpattern powered by Tokio broadcast channels. - 🔄 Resilience & Fault Tolerance: Rate limiters, circuit breakers, and distributed synchronizers out of the box.
- 🧠 Enterprise Patterns: CQRS Command/Query buses, Saga orchestrators, and Event Emitters.
- 🛠️ Code Factory & AutoZod: Automated generic CRUD routing and strongly-typed payload validation.
Ferrox enforces an Onion Request Pipeline. Requests pass through non-blocking, early-failing security, rate-limiting, and validation layers before ever touching business logic or database pools.
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| Incoming HTTP Stream |
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v
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| 1. Global Middleware (Logging, Tracing, CORS) |
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v
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| 2. Rate Limiter & Circuit Breaker (Redis / In-Mem) |
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v
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| 3. Auth Guards (PASETO / JWT Claims Extraction) |
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v
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| 4. Validation Pipe (AutoZod / ValidatedJson<T>) |
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v
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| 5. Controller Route Handler |
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| 6. Fat Provider / Service (CQRS / Saga Orchestrator) |
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| 7. Data Persistence (SeaORM / Mongo / Redis Pool) |
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Ferrox is structured as a modular workspace containing 35+ specialized crates:
| Crate Category | Crate Name | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Core Application | ferrox-app |
Multi-transport lifecycle manager & graceful shutdown orchestrator |
ferrox-errors |
Centralized AppError, ErrorResponse, and Axum IntoResponse |
|
ferrox-config |
Typed configuration loader (.env, .toml) with secrecy integration |
|
ferrox-types |
Standardized domain types, wrapper IDs, and Pagination helpers |
|
ferrox-utils |
Common utilities and helper algorithms | |
| Abstractions & DX | ferrox-validation |
ValidatedJson<T> extractor with automated validator checks |
ferrox-guards |
Declarative role-based access control (RequireRole) extractors |
|
ferrox-interceptors |
Request/response execution lifecycle interceptors & CacheInterceptor |
|
ferrox-crud-gen |
Macros (crud_router!, vertical_slice!) for zero-boilerplate CRUD |
|
| Databases | ferrox-database-core |
Base Repository<Entity, Id> trait abstraction |
ferrox-database-seaorm |
Relational database driver (Postgres, MySQL, SQLite via SeaORM) | |
ferrox-database-mongo |
Document database driver and BSON helpers | |
ferrox-database-redis |
In-memory key-value cache, connection pool, and pub/sub | |
ferrox-migrations |
Automatic database schema migration runner | |
| Resilience & Security | ferrox-security |
PASETO/JWT token engine, dual-token refresh, PublicId |
ferrox-singleflight |
Cache stampede (dogpile effect) prevention using broadcast channels | |
ferrox-circuit-breaker |
Circuit breaker pattern (Closed, Open, HalfOpen state machine) | |
ferrox-rate-limiter |
Redis-backed fixed window / token bucket rate limiter | |
ferrox-sync |
Distributed locking and synchronization mechanisms | |
| Architectures | ferrox-cqrs |
Decoupled CommandBus and QueryBus dispatchers |
ferrox-saga |
Saga orchestrator engine for distributed multi-step transactions | |
ferrox-events |
DomainEvent dispatcher and InMemoryDispatcher broadcast bus |
|
ferrox-jobs |
Apalis & Redis-backed background worker queue engine | |
ferrox-schedule |
Cron job scheduler for background task execution | |
| Observability | ferrox-logger |
Structured JSON logging subscriber and Sentry integration |
ferrox-health |
Kubernetes /healthz (liveness) and /readyz (readiness) probes |
|
ferrox-metrics |
Prometheus metrics exporter and counter metrics | |
ferrox-tracing |
OpenTelemetry distributed tracing and correlation ID handling | |
| Transports | ferrox-transports |
Multi-transport interfaces (HTTP, gRPC, WebSockets, FTP) |
ferrox-graphql |
GraphQL integration with async-graphql schema builders & SDL export |
|
ferrox-sse |
Server-Sent Events (SSE) push stream builders | |
ferrox-storage |
Local disk and S3/MinIO cloud storage abstraction | |
ferrox-datagrid |
AG-Grid, MUI X, and TanStack Table query parameter translators | |
| Integrations | ferrox-mailer |
Lettre SMTP email dispatcher (SendGrid, AWS SES) |
ferrox-notifications-slack |
Slack webhook alert dispatchers | |
ferrox-payments-stripe |
Stripe Checkout & Webhook verification | |
ferrox-payments-google |
Google Pay and in-app purchase validation | |
ferrox-feature-flags |
Feature toggle evaluation engine | |
ferrox-webhooks |
Outgoing webhook dispatcher with HMAC signing & backoff retry | |
ferrox-reports |
PDF & CSV report generation helpers | |
ferrox-cloud-helpers |
Cloud SDK utilities (AWS/GCP/Azure) | |
ferrox-i18n |
Multi-language translation & locale extraction | |
| Tooling | cargo-ferrox |
Command Line Interface (cargo ferrox init, cargo ferrox generate --lang ts) |
Add the required Ferrox crates to your Cargo.toml:
[dependencies]
ferrox-app = { path = "crates/ferrox-app" }
ferrox-transports = { path = "crates/ferrox-transports" }
ferrox-logger = { path = "crates/ferrox-logger" }
ferrox-errors = { path = "crates/ferrox-errors" }
axum = "0.7"
tokio = { version = "1", features = ["full"] }use axum::{routing::get, Json, Router};
use ferrox_app::FerroxApp;
use ferrox_logger::{setup_logger, LoggerConfig};
use ferrox_transports::http::HttpTransport;
use serde_json::json;
#[tokio::main]
async fn main() -> Result<(), Box<dyn std::error::Error>> {
// 1. Initialize Logger
let _sentry = setup_logger(LoggerConfig::default())?;
// 2. Build Router
let router = Router::new().route(
"/api/v1/ping",
get(|| async { Json(json!({ "status": "ok", "framework": "Ferrox" })) }),
);
// 3. Configure HTTP Transport
let transport = HttpTransport::new(router, 3000)
.with_strict_cors(vec!["http://localhost:3000"]);
// 4. Start Ferrox Multi-Transport App
FerroxApp::new()
.add_transport(transport)
.start()
.await?;
Ok(())
}The full documentation website is built with Docusaurus and located in the docs/ directory.
To run the documentation portal locally:
cd docs
npm install
npm run startVisit http://localhost:3000 to browse the interactive documentation.
Join the official global Ferrox Community to discuss framework architecture, ask questions, share showcases, and collaborate with developers worldwide:
- Discord Invite Link: https://discord.gg/Bx3CzGec7d
- Reddit Subreddit: r/Ferrox
Ferrox is dual-licensed under either of the following licenses at your option:
Unless you explicitly state otherwise, any contribution intentionally submitted for inclusion in Ferrox by you shall be dual-licensed as above, without any additional terms or conditions.