Rust Best Practices

Rust Best Practices

Apply these guidelines when writing or reviewing Rust code. Based on Apollo GraphQL's Rust Best Practices Handbook.

Best Practices Reference

Before reviewing, familiarize yourself with Apollo's Rust best practices. Read ALL relevant chapters in the same turn in parallel. Reference these files when providing feedback:

• Chapter 1 - Coding Styles and Idioms: Borrowing vs cloning, Copy trait, Option/Result handling, iterators, comments, when to extract a function (duplication vs. wrong abstraction)
• Chapter 2 - Clippy and Linting: Clippy configuration, important lints, workspace lint setup
• Chapter 3 - Performance Mindset: Profiling, avoiding redundant clones, stack vs heap, zero-cost abstractions
• Chapter 4 - Error Handling: Result vs panic, thiserror vs anyhow, error hierarchies
• Chapter 5 - Automated Testing: Test naming, one assertion per test, snapshot testing
• Chapter 6 - Generics and Dispatch: Static vs dynamic dispatch, trait objects
• Chapter 7 - Type State Pattern: Compile-time state safety, when to use it
• Chapter 8 - Comments vs Documentation: When to comment, doc comments, rustdoc
• Chapter 9 - Understanding Pointers: Thread safety, Send/Sync, pointer types

Quick Reference

Borrowing & Ownership

• Prefer &T over .clone() unless ownership transfer is required
• Use &str over String, &[T] over Vec<T> in function parameters
• Small Copy types (≤24 bytes) can be passed by value
• Use Cow<'_, T> when ownership is ambiguous

Error Handling

• Return Result<T, E> for fallible operations; avoid panic! in production
• Never use unwrap()/expect() outside tests
• Use thiserror for library errors, anyhow for binaries only
• Prefer ? operator over match chains for error propagation

Performance

• Always benchmark with --release flag
• Run cargo clippy -- -D clippy::perf for performance hints
• Avoid cloning in loops; use .iter() instead of .into_iter() for Copy types
• Prefer iterators over manual loops; avoid intermediate .collect() calls

Linting

Run regularly: cargo clippy --all-targets --all-features --locked -- -D warnings

Key lints to watch:

• redundant_clone - unnecessary cloning
• large_enum_variant - oversized variants (consider boxing)
• needless_collect - premature collection

Use #[expect(clippy::lint)] over #[allow(...)] with justification comment.

Testing

• Name tests descriptively: process_should_return_error_when_input_empty()
• One assertion per test when possible
• Use doc tests (///) for public API examples
• Consider cargo insta for snapshot testing generated output

Generics & Dispatch

• Prefer generics (static dispatch) for performance-critical code
• Use dyn Trait only when heterogeneous collections are needed
• Box at API boundaries, not internally

Type State Pattern

Encode valid states in the type system to catch invalid operations at compile time:

struct Connection<State> { /* ... */ _state: PhantomData<State> }
struct Disconnected;
struct Connected;

impl Connection<Connected> {
    fn send(&self, data: &[u8]) { /* only connected can send */ }
}

Documentation

• // comments explain why (safety, workarounds, design rationale)
• /// doc comments explain what and how for public APIs
• Every TODO needs a linked issue: // TODO(#42): ...
• Enable #![deny(missing_docs)] for libraries