Dezentrale Erkelenz – Rust/Axum Website

Reimplementation of the website for the c3e3 – Dezentrale Erkelenz hack- and makerspace, built with Rust and Axum. The site is fully server-rendered, bilingual (German/English), and works without a JavaScript framework.

Overview

• Rust + Axum instead of Next.js, shipped as a single binary.
• Language-independent URLs without a locale prefix, e.g. /about/, /blog/willkommen/.
• Left-hand grouped navigation (Information, Association, Legal, Meta).
• Breadcrumbs with a home icon at the top: ⌂ / blog / willkommen.
• Automatic dark/light mode via prefers-color-scheme.
• Minimal JavaScript: only the Leaflet map on the location page. The calendar, navigation, language switch and all other pages work without JS.
• Blog, documents, ICS calendar, SpaceAPI, RSS, sitemap, robots.txt, legal notice, privacy, contact and support.
• Content comes from an external Git repository (CONTENT_REPO_URL) or from a local checkout.

Requirements

• Rust 1.88 or newer (edition 2024). Tested with cargo 1.99.1.
• Optional: git for automatically syncing the content repository.
• Optional: Docker and Docker Compose.

Running Locally

cd /home/mppny/Dev/repo/dezentrale-website-rust
cargo run

By default the server runs at http://127.0.0.1:3000.

On first start the application looks for content in this order:

1. CONTENT_DIR, if set.
2. ../dezentrale-content, if present and CONTENT_REPO_URL is not set.
3. ./content.

For local development the content repository usually lives at ../dezentrale-content. Example content:

../dezentrale-content/
├── blog/
│   └── willkommen/
│       ├── content.de.md
│       ├── content.en.md
│       └── cover.jpg
└── documents/
    ├── Satzung.pdf
    └── Mitgliedsantrag.pdf

Configuration

All variables can be set through the environment or .env / .env.local. Template: .env.example.

Variable	Default	Description
HOST	127.0.0.1	Bind address. Use 0.0.0.0 inside Docker.
PORT	3000	HTTP port.
SITE_URL	https://dezentrale-erkelenz.de	Public base URL for canonical links, RSS and sitemap.
CONTENT_REPO_URL	–	Git repository containing blog/ and documents/. Empty = local checkout.
CONTENT_REPO_BRANCH	HEAD	Branch/tag for the content sync.
CONTENT_SYNC_INTERVAL_SECONDS	60	Background sync interval (min. 5 s).
CONTENT_DIR	see above	Forces a specific content directory.
PUBLIC_DIR	./public	Directory for static files.
SPACE_STATUS_FILE	./content/space/status.json	File for the SpaceAPI status.
SPACEAPI_SECRET_TOKEN	–	Token for write requests to the SpaceAPI.
NEXTCLOUD_CALENDAR_ICS_URL	–	Public ICS export URL for the calendar.
CALENDAR_CACHE_SECONDS	120	In-memory cache for the ICS feed.

Routes

Path	Description
/	Home page with space status, page links and the next meetings.
/location/	Directions and OpenStreetMap map.
/about/	About the space.
/calendar/	All events, grouped by month and day.
/blog/	Blog overview.
/blog/{slug}/	Individual blog post.
/documents/	Documents from the content repository.
/donate/	Support us.
/contact/	Contact.
/imprint/	Legal notice.
/privacy/	Privacy policy.
/rss.xml	RSS feed (language via cookie/query).
/de/rss.xml, /en/rss.xml	Fixed RSS feeds per language (legacy URLs).
/sitemap.xml	Sitemap.
/robots.txt	Robots file.
/api/space	SpaceAPI 0.13 (GET, PUT, OPTIONS).
/api/documents/{filename}	Document download.
/api/blog-posts/{slug}/images/{image}	Images from blog posts.
/lang/de/, /lang/en/	Set the language and redirect back (?next=/path/).

Legacy locale-prefixed URLs such as /de/about/ or /en/blog/ permanently redirect to the unprefixed variant and set the language in the process.

Language

The language is determined in this order:

1. ?lang=de / ?lang=en (stored as a cookie),
2. lang cookie,
3. Accept-Language,
4. default: German.

Content

Blog

A post is a directory under blog/. Supported layouts:

• content.de.md + content.en.md (bilingual),
• content.md (single language),
• index.de.md / index.en.md,
• a single Markdown file blog/{slug}.md.

Frontmatter (YAML):

---
title: Welcome to our site!
excerpt: A quick overview.
publishedAt: '2026-11-07T16:00:00.000Z'
readingTime: 1 min read
category: Space
locale: de/en
status: public
coverImage: ./cover.jpg
coverImageAlt: Dezentrale Erkelenz
---

status can be public or draft. Relative image paths such as ./cover.jpg are automatically served through the image endpoint. Markdown is rendered with pulldown-cmark.

Documents

All files under documents/ are listed, except _metadata.json, metadata.json and readme.md. Optionally, _metadata.json controls display names, dates and visibility:

{
  "Satzung.pdf": {
    "displayName": "Satzung",
    "originalName": "Satzung.pdf",
    "uploadedAt": "2026-01-01T00:00:00Z",
    "status": "public"
  }
}

SpaceAPI

Read the status:

curl http://127.0.0.1:3000/api/space

Write the status (token required):

curl -X PUT http://127.0.0.1:3000/api/space \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -H 'X-Api-Key: your-secret-token' \
  -d '{"open":true}'

Alternatively via query parameters:

curl "http://127.0.0.1:3000/api/space?open=true&token=your-secret-token"

The status is stored in SPACE_STATUS_FILE and read by the home page.

Docker

Build and start:

docker compose up --build -d

Or manually:

docker build -t dezentrale-website .
docker run --rm -p 3000:3000 \
  -e SITE_URL=http://localhost:3000 \
  -e CONTENT_REPO_URL=https://git.bohmer.systems/moony/dezentrale-content.git \
  -v dezentrale-content:/app/content \
  dezentrale-website

The image uses a multi-stage build: Rust compiles the binary, and the runtime image contains only the binary, public/, plus git and ca-certificates for content syncing.

Project Structure

src/
├── main.rs          # Startup, logging, content sync, HTTP server
├── config.rs        # Environment configuration
├── i18n.rs          # Language detection, translations, language switching
├── content_repo.rs  # Git sync for the content repository
├── blog.rs          # Blog posts, frontmatter, images
├── documents.rs     # Document list and downloads
├── calendar.rs      # ICS parser, recurrence rules, grouping
├── space.rs         # SpaceAPI status
├── routes.rs        # All HTTP routes
├── templates.rs     # Askama template structs
├── rss.rs           # RSS 2.0
├── sitemap.rs       # Sitemap
├── static_files.rs  # Static file serving
└── util.rs          # Date formatting, MIME types, URL encoding
templates/           # Askama templates (embedded at compile time)
messages/            # de.json / en.json (embedded at compile time)
public/              # Static assets, Leaflet, fonts, logos

Design System

The visual style follows the 40C3 style guide. Fonts are stored locally under public/fonts/ and loaded via @font-face – there are no Google Fonts and no system font stacks:

• Headings: Jersey 10 (uppercase or mixed case),
• Subheadings: Hack Bold, underlined,
• Body text: Hack Regular, plus Italic and Bold Italic.

The palette consists of style guide colors 0–7 plus A and B. The original green (#75b44b, color 0) has been replaced by a blue (#5276a2). Text and accents use a lighter blue in dark mode (#7fa2cc) and a darker blue in light mode (#3c638d). The site primarily uses blue and neutral surfaces; the remaining colors are available as accents. Dark mode uses neutral grays from #0a0a0a, light mode uses #ebebeb.

Colors, spacing and components live in public/assets/style.css.

Each page has 3–4 very subtle decorative words (C3E3, 40C3, C3, <3, :3) in the heading font in the background. Selection and placement are derived server-side from the page path and stay fixed in the viewport.

Development

cargo check     # quick type check
cargo test      # unit tests
cargo fmt       # formatting
cargo clippy    # lints

Templates (templates/) and translations (messages/) are embedded at compile time with include_str!. Changes there require a restart or rebuild; static files under public/ are read directly from disk.