Secure Notes Project 🦀

A modular CLI (Command Line Interface) application built to master core Rust programming concepts, focusing on memory safety and data organization.

📖 Description

The Goal: To allow an authenticated user to create, read, and search secure notes using a persistent runtime storage system.

This project demonstrates my understanding of:

• Structs & Data Modeling: Grouping related data (Title + Content) into custom types.
• Memory Ownership & Borrowing: Passing mutable (&mut) and immutable (&) references between functions.
• Vectors: managing dynamic lists of complex objects.
• Algorithms: Implementing a case-insensitive linear search.
• Refactoring: Breaking a monolithic main function into clean, reusable components.

🛠️ How It Works

1. Data Structure (Structs)

Instead of using simple strings, I implemented a custom struct to model a real note. This allows the application to handle multiple pieces of data as a single unit.

struct Note {
    title: String,
    content: String,
}

2. Modular Architecture

The code has been refactored from a single script into specialized functions. The main function now acts as a clean "command center" that delegates tasks:

• pass_authenticate(): Checks whether a user can access the application or not.Handles security.
• menu(): Displays a list of choices for the authenticated user to choose.
• add_note(): Takes a mutable reference to the vector to push new data.
• list_items() & search(): Take immutable references to read data without modifying it.

3. Features

Authentication

The user must pass a password check to enter. The logic is encapsulated in a dedicated function that loops until success, keeping the main logic clean.

Note Management

• Add Note: Captures a Title and Content, packages them into a Note struct, and pushes it to the heap-allocated Vector.
• List Notes: Iterates through the stored structs and prints formatted output.

Search Functionality

I implemented a search algorithm that filters notes by keyword.

• Case-Insensitive: It converts both the stored title and the search query to lowercase so that "shop" finds "Shopping".
• Borrowing Logic: Uses references to avoid unnecessary memory cloning during the search.

Graceful Exit option

• Allows the user to close the application cleanly via the menu, rather than force-stopping the terminal (Ctrl+C).

How to Run

To start the application, navigate to the project folder and run:

cargo run