Rust client for the Strava API

This repo contains:

• A working Rust client for the Strava API strava_rs.
• An example project that uses the Rust client to make a simple Strava API call.
• A patch file to fix a few issues with Strava's Swagger JSON spec.
• A few support files.
• Some salty commentary.

Salty Commentary

Consuming the Strava API sucks. Strava provides a JSON Swagger description of their API and a few basic instructions. There are issues with the spec they provide, however, and the code generation tools for Swagger are a minefield.

I've found the entire process to be pretty busted and just plain unfortunate because I love Strava. I wish I could say the same about my experience trying to use the Strava API in 2020.

Below are the steps I went through to get a working Strava client in Rust. If you're trying to generate a Strava client in Rust (or any other language) you may find the information useful.

Here we go.

Clone this repo

git clone [email protected]:nanreh/strava-rs.git

Download Strava's (broken) Swagger spec

cd strava-rs
curl https://developers.strava.com/swagger/swagger.json -o strava-api-spec.json

Unfortunately, this API spec has several problems which are consequential for generating working Rust code (and code in other languages I'm sure). The next step applies a patch file to address these issues.

Patch it

patch < strava-api-spec.patch

Download openapi-generator-cli-5.0.0-beta.jar

The Strava developers page sends developers to Swagger Codegen but its Rust support is antiquated and the code it generates is awful. That's not just my opinion: the Rust compiler hates it too.

OpenAPI Generator is a fork of Swagger Codegen. It is still a terrible way to consume an HTTP API, but it's far ahead of Swagger Codegen at the moment.

It's important to use version 5.0.0-beta (or newer) of OpenAPI Generator since it includes many recent updates to the Rust codegen, including the option to generate code that relies on the reqwest crate (much simpler) plus updated dependencies.

wget https://repo1.maven.org/maven2/org/openapitools/openapi-generator-cli/5.0.0-beta/openapi-generator-cli-5.0.0-beta.jar -O openapi-generator-cli.jar

Joy: it's a Java program. So you need to make sure you have java installed. Because it's 2020 and everybody loves Java about as much as Covid-19.

If you want to know why OpenAPI Generator forked from Swagger Codegen, there's a write up available here. Maybe you're like me and one afternoon you thought "I'm going to build something cool with the Strava API" and now you're reading about open source drama on a project you never knew existed and never cared about. You're welcome.

Generate the Rust client code.

We use a config file with values for the Rust code generator to specifically ask for a client that uses reqwest and that supports async operation.

java -jar ./openapi-generator-cli.jar generate -i ./strava-api-spec.json -g rust --config=rust-gen-config.json --generate-alias-as-model -o strava_rs

Build

cd strava_rs
cargo build

This compiles pretty cleanly as of this writing (2020/07/01) with just a single warning for an unused variable:

warning: unused variable: `file`
  --> src/apis/uploads_api.rs:39:78
   |
39 |     pub async fn create_upload(configuration: &configuration::Configuration, file: Option<std::path::PathBuf>, name: Option<&str>, description: Option<&str>, trainer: Option<&str>, commute: Option<&str>, data_type: Option<&str>, external_id: Option<&str>) -> Result<crate::models::Upload, Error<CreateUploadError>> {
   |                                                                              ^^^^ help: if this is intentional, prefix it with an underscore: `_file`
   |
   = note: `#[warn(unused_variables)]` on by default

Example

So how do you use this monstrosity to make an HTTP call to Strava's API? Great question. Check the example project in this repo.