Installation

Prerequisites

Blixt requires Rust 1.85+ with the cargo package manager. If you don't have Rust installed, grab it from rustup.rs:

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh

You also need a database. Blixt supports PostgreSQL and SQLite:

  • PostgreSQL -- recommended for production. Install via your package manager or postgresql.org.
  • SQLite -- zero setup, great for prototyping. Already available on most systems.

Install the CLI

Install blixt-cli from the repository:

cargo install --git https://github.com/ripkitten-co/blixt blixt-cli

Verify the installation:

blixt --help

You should see the available commands:

Lightning-fast Rust web framework

Usage: blixt <COMMAND>

Commands:
  new       Create a new Blixt project
  dev       Start the development server
  build     Build for production
  generate  Generate scaffolding
  db        Run database migrations

Create a project

Generate a new project with blixt new. You can specify the database backend with --db, or Blixt will prompt you interactively:

# PostgreSQL (default)
blixt new my_app --db postgres

# SQLite
blixt new my_app --db sqlite

This downloads Datastar (verified by SHA-256 checksum), compiles your Tailwind CSS, and scaffolds the full project.

What gets generated

my_app/
  Cargo.toml
  .env.example
  .gitignore
  src/
    main.rs
    controllers/
      mod.rs
      home.rs
      api.rs
  templates/
    layouts/
      app.html
    pages/
      home.html
    fragments/
      time.html
      status.html
    components/
    emails/
  static/
    css/
      app.css
      output.css
    js/
      datastar.js
    logo.svg
  migrations/

Key pieces:

  • src/main.rs -- application entry point with route registration
  • src/controllers/ -- request handlers, one file per resource
  • templates/ -- Askama HTML templates organized by type (layouts, pages, fragments, components, emails)
  • static/ -- CSS, JavaScript, and other assets served at /static/
  • migrations/ -- SQL migration files, run in timestamp order

Configure the environment

Copy the example env file and edit it:

cd my_app
cp .env.example .env

For PostgreSQL, update DATABASE_URL with your connection string:

BLIXT_ENV=development
HOST=127.0.0.1
PORT=3000
DATABASE_URL=postgres://localhost/my_app
JWT_SECRET=change-me-to-a-random-secret-at-least-32-chars

For SQLite, the default works out of the box:

DATABASE_URL=sqlite://data.db

Run the dev server

Start the development server:

blixt dev

This does three things simultaneously:

  1. Compiles and runs your application with cargo run
  2. Watches src/ and templates/ for changes and auto-restarts the server
  3. Runs Tailwind CSS in watch mode for hot CSS reloading

Open http://localhost:3000 in your browser. You should see the Blixt welcome page with a reactive counter (client-side Datastar signals) and SSE fragment demos.

Project dependencies

The generated Cargo.toml includes these core dependencies:

[dependencies]
askama = "0.15"
axum = { version = "0.8", features = ["macros"] }
blixt = { git = "https://github.com/ripkitten-co/blixt" }
chrono = { version = "0.4", features = ["serde"] }
serde = { version = "1", features = ["derive"] }
serde_json = "1"
tokio = { version = "1", features = ["full"] }
tracing = "0.1"

For SQLite projects, the blixt dependency uses default-features = false with the sqlite feature flag:

blixt = { git = "https://github.com/ripkitten-co/blixt", default-features = false, features = ["sqlite"] }
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