🧮 Full Stack Calculator (Rust + React)

📌 Project Overview

This project is a simple full-stack calculator application built by students.

The goal is to learn how frontend and backend systems work together by building a calculator from scratch using:

• Rust for the backend (API + logic)
• React for the frontend (UI)

Students will implement basic calculator operations and connect the frontend to the backend through HTTP requests.

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🎯 Learning Objectives

By the end of this project, you should be able to:

• Build a REST API in Rust
• Understand how a frontend communicates with a backend
• Manage application state in React
• Handle user input and display results
• Structure a simple full-stack project

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🏗️ Project Structure

calculator-project/
│
├── backend/     # Rust API
├── frontend/    # React app
└── README.md

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⚙️ Features

• Basic arithmetic operations:

  • Addition (+)
  • Subtraction (-)
  • Multiplication (*)
  • Division (/)

• Input validation

• Error handling (e.g. divide by zero)

• API communication between frontend and backend

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🚀 Getting Started

1. Clone the repository

git clone <repo-url>
cd calculator-project

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2. Backend Setup (Rust)

Make sure Rust is installed:

rustc --version

Run the backend:

cd backend
cargo run

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3. Frontend Setup (React)

Make sure Node.js is installed:

node -v

Run the frontend:

cd frontend
npm install
npm start

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🔌 API Example

POST /calculate

Request:

{
  "operation": "add",
  "a": 5,
  "b": 3
}

Response:

{
  "result": 8
}

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🧠 Rules for Students

• Do NOT copy full solutions — focus on learning
• Keep code simple and readable
• Commit regularly with clear messages
• Ask questions when stuck

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✅ Expected Outcome

A working calculator where:

• The frontend sends requests
• The backend processes calculations
• The result is displayed to the user

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💡 Bonus Ideas (Optional)

• Add more operations (%, power, square root)
• Add history of calculations
• Improve UI design
• Add unit tests

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Happy coding 🚀