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Tokio

Tokio is a runtime for asynchronous programming in Rust. While .NET has built-in support for async/await, Rust's async functionality is provided by external crates. Tokio is the most popular async runtime and provides:

  • A multi-threaded runtime for executing asynchronous code
  • Utilities for asynchronous I/O operations
  • Synchronization primitives for concurrent code
  • Tools for working with time (delays, timeouts)

Tokio is essential for building network services because it allows your application to handle many connections concurrently without blocking.

The #[tokio::main] Attribute​

The #[tokio::main] attribute macro transforms your main function into one that initializes the Tokio runtime:

#[tokio::main]
async fn main() {
    // Your asynchronous code here
}

Under the hood, this expands to code that creates a runtime and runs your async main function to completion.