Building a Video Streaming API with Rust: A Step-by-Step Guide

Introduction

In this blog post, we’ll explore how to create a video streaming API using Rust. Rust is known for its performance and safety, making it an excellent choice for high-performance applications like video streaming. We’ll walk through setting up a basic server, handling video files, and streaming them to clients.

Prerequisites

Before we begin, make sure you have the following installed:

• Rust
• FFmpeg (optional, for video file processing)

Step 1: Setting Up a New Rust Project

First, let’s create a new Rust project:

cargo new video_streaming_api
cd video_streaming_api

Step 2: Adding Dependencies

Open Cargo.toml and add the necessary dependencies:

[dependencies]
actix-web = "4.0"
tokio = { version = "1", features = ["full"] }

• actix-web: A powerful, pragmatic, and extremely fast web framework for Rust.
• tokio: An asynchronous runtime for Rust.

Step 3: Creating the Server