Dapr SDK for Rust (Alpha)

June 1, 2026 · View on GitHub

Dapr is a portable, event-driven, serverless runtime for building distributed applications across cloud and edge.

Alpha

This SDK is currently in Alpha. Work is underway to bring forward a stable release and will likely involve breaking changes.

Documentation is incomplete.
Not all building blocks are currently implemented.
There may be bugs.
The SDK does not have complete test coverage.

The maintainers commit to resolving any issues that arise and bringing this SDK to a stable release. With this in mind, the SDK will follow the norms and conventions of a stable SDK so far as is possible.

This SDK will be accounted for as a part of the release process. Support for the latest runtime release is targeted but not guaranteed.

The main tenet of development will be stability and functionality that improves resiliency.

Prerequisites

Ensure you have Rust version 1.88 or higher installed. If not, install Rust here.

These crates no longer require protoc unless to recompile the protobuf files.

How to use

Add the following to your Cargo.toml file:

[dependencies]
dapr = "0.19"

Here's a basic example to create a client:

use dapr;

#[tokio::main]
async fn main() -> Result<(), Box<dyn std::error::Error>> {
    // Reads DAPR_GRPC_ENDPOINT / DAPR_GRPC_PORT / DAPR_API_TOKEN /
    // DAPR_CLIENT_TIMEOUT_SECONDS from the environment, with sensible
    // defaults (`http://127.0.0.1:50001`, 5 s timeout, no token).
    let mut client = dapr::Client::new().await?;
    let _ = client.get_metadata().await?;
    Ok(())
}

Configuration

The client honors the following environment variables, matching the other Dapr SDKs:

Variable	Default	Purpose
`DAPR_GRPC_ENDPOINT`	(unset)	Full sidecar endpoint (scheme + host + port). Takes precedence.
`DAPR_GRPC_PORT`	`50001`	Port on `127.0.0.1` when `DAPR_GRPC_ENDPOINT` is unset.
`DAPR_API_TOKEN`	(unset)	Outbound `dapr-api-token` metadata sent on every gRPC call.
`DAPR_CLIENT_TIMEOUT_SECONDS`	`5`	Connect timeout for the gRPC channel.
`APP_API_TOKEN`	(unset)	Inbound auth token enforced by `AppApiTokenLayer` (see below).

You can configure the same settings programmatically via dapr::client::ClientOptions:

use std::time::Duration;
use dapr::client::ClientOptions;

# async fn run() -> Result<(), Box<dyn std::error::Error>> {
let opts = ClientOptions::new()
    .with_address("https://my-sidecar:443?tls=true".to_string())
    .with_api_token("my-token")
    .with_timeout(Duration::from_secs(10));
let mut client = dapr::Client::from_options(opts).await?;
# Ok(()) }

Or, if you just need to override the address:

# async fn run() -> Result<(), Box<dyn std::error::Error>> {
let mut client = dapr::Client::connect_with_address(
    "http://127.0.0.1:50001".to_string()
).await?;
# Ok(()) }

Authentication

Outbound — set DAPR_API_TOKEN (or ClientOptions::with_api_token) and the client automatically attaches the dapr-api-token metadata header to every request. No further setup required.

Inbound — protect your app-callback gRPC server with APP_API_TOKEN by adding AppApiTokenLayer to your tonic Server. When the env var is unset the layer is a no-op, so it is safe to install unconditionally:

use dapr::appcallback::AppCallbackService;
use dapr::client::AppApiTokenLayer;
use dapr::dapr::proto::runtime::v1::app_callback_server::AppCallbackServer;
use tonic::transport::Server;

# async fn run() -> Result<(), Box<dyn std::error::Error>> {
let addr = "127.0.0.1:50051".parse()?;
Server::builder()
    .layer(AppApiTokenLayer::from_env())
    .add_service(AppCallbackServer::new(AppCallbackService::new()))
    .serve(addr)
    .await?;
# Ok(()) }

See the client-config and app-api-token examples for end-to-end usage.

Migrating from `Client::connect` / `Client::connect_with_port`

Client::connect and Client::connect_with_port are deprecated in 0.19.0 and will be removed in 0.20.0. Migrate as follows:

// Before (deprecated):
let port: u16 = std::env::var("DAPR_GRPC_PORT")?.parse()?;
let addr = format!("http://127.0.0.1:{port}");
let mut client = dapr::Client::<dapr::client::TonicClient>::connect(addr).await?;

// After:
let mut client = dapr::Client::new().await?;

cargo build

Developing (Updating .proto files from upstream Dapr)

To fetch the latest .proto files from Dapr execute the script update-protos.sh:

./update-protos.sh

By default, the script fetches the latest proto updates from the master branch of the Dapr repository. If you need to choose a specific release or version, use the -v flag:

./update-protos.sh -v v1.15.0

You will also need to install protoc.

Protos can then be compiled using:

cargo run proto-gen

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