blessed-rs/data/crates.json

{
    "crate_groups": [
        {
            "slug": "common",
            "name": "Common",
            "description": "Very commonly used crates that everyone should know about",
            "purposes": [
                {
                    "name": "Random numbers",
                    "crates": [{
                        "name": "rand",
                        "notes": "De facto random number generation library split out from the standard library"
                    }]
                },
                {
                    "name": "Serialization (JSON, YAML, etc)",
                    "crates": [{
                        "name": "serde",
                        "notes": "De facto serialization library. Use in conjunction with sub-crates like serde_json for the specific format that you are using."
                    }]
                },
                {
                    "name": "Regular Expressions",
                    "crates": [{
                        "name": "regex",
                        "notes": "De facto regex library. Very fast, but does not support fancier features such as backtracking."
                    }, 
                    {
                        "name": "fancy_regex",
                        "notes": "Use if need features such as backtracking which regex doesn't support"
                    }]
                },
                {
                    "name": "Gzip (de)compression",
                    "crates": [{
                        "name": "flate2",
                        "notes": "Uses a pure-Rust implementation by default. Use feature flags to opt in to system zlib."
                    }]
                },
                {
                    "name": "Time & Date",
                    "crates": [{
                        "name": "time",
                        "notes": "The original datetime crate which was split out of std pre-rust-1.0. Preferrable if covers your needs, but it's quite limited in what it provides."
                    }, {
                        "name": "chrono",
                        "notes": "The most comphrehensive and full-featured datetime library, but more complex because of it."
                    }]
                },
                {
                    "name": "HTTP Requests",
                    "crates": [{
                        "name": "reqwest",
                        "notes": "Full-fat HTTP client. Can be used in both synchronous and asynchronous code. Requires tokio runtime."
                    }, {
                        "name": "ureq",
                        "notes": "Minimal synchronous HTTP client focussed on simplicity and minimising dependencies."
                    }]
                }
            ]
        },
        {
            "slug": "error-handling",
            "name": "Error Handling",
            "description": "Crates for more easily handling errors",
            "purposes": [
                {
                    "name": "For applications",
                    "crates": [{
                        "name": "anyhow",
                        "notes": "Provides a boxed error type that can hold any error, and helpers for generating an application-level stack trace."
                    }]
                },
                {
                    "name": "For libraries",
                    "crates": [{
                        "name": "thiserror",
                        "notes": "Helps with generating boilerplate for enum-style error types."
                    }]
                }
            ]
        },
        {
            "slug": "logging",
            "name": "Logging",
            "description": "Crates for logging. Note that in general you will need a seperate crate for actually printing/storing the logs",
            "purposes": [
                {
                    "name": "Text-based logging",
                    "crates": [{
                        "name": "tracing",
                        "notes": "Tracing is now the go-to crate for logging."
                    }, {
                        "name": "log",
                        "notes": "An older and simpler crate if your needs are simple and you are not using any async code."
                    }]
                },
                {
                    "name": "Structed logging",
                    "crates": [{
                        "name": "tracing",
                        "notes": "Tracing is now the go-to crate for logging."
                    }, {
                        "name": "slog",
                        "notes": "Structed logging"
                    }]
                }
            ]
        },
        {
            "slug": "lang-extensions",
            "name": "Language Extensions",
            "description": "General purpose utility crates that extend language and/or stdlib functionality.",
            "purposes": [
                {
                    "name": "Lazy static variable initialization",
                    "crates": [{
                        "name": "once_cell",
                        "notes": "Newer crate with more ergonomic API. On track to be incorporated into the standard library. Should be preferred for all new projects."
                    }, {
                        "name": "lazy_static",
                        "notes": "Older crate. API is less convenient, but crate is stable and maintained."
                    }]
                },
                {
                    "name": "Iterator helpers",
                    "crates": [{
                        "name": "itertools",
                        "notes": "A bunch of useful methods on iterators that aren't in the stdlib"
                    }]
                },
                {
                    "name": "Abstracting over different number types",
                    "crates": [{
                        "name": "num",
                        "notes": "Traits like Number, Add, etc that allow you write functions that are generic over the specific numeric type"
                    }]
                },
                {
                    "name": "Endian conversion",
                    "crates": [{
                        "name": "byteorder",
                        "notes": "Utility functions to convert between different endianness or read/write data with a specific endianness"
                    }]
                },
                {
                    "name": "Bitflags",
                    "crates": [{
                        "name": "bitflags",
                        "notes": "Strongly typed bitflag types"
                    }]
                }
            ]
        }
    ]
}