Writing to stdio & reading from stdout in Rust Command process - multithreading

Question

I'll try to simplify as much as possible what I'm trying to do accomplish but in a nutshell here is my problem:
I am trying to spawn the node shell as a process in Rust. I would like to pass to the process' stdin javascript code and read the nodejs output from stdout of the process. This would be an interactive usage where the node shell is spawned and keeps receiving JS instructions and executing them.
I do not wish to launch the nodejs app using a file argument.
I have read quite a bit about std::process::Command, tokio and why we can't write and read to a piped input using standard library. One of the solutions that I kept seeing online (in order to not block the main thread while reading/writing) is to use a thread for reading the output. Most solutions did not involve a continuous write/read flow.
What I have done is to spawn 2 threads, one that keeps writing to stdin and one that keeps reading from stdout. That way, I thought, I won't be blocking the main thread. However my issue is that only 1 thread can actively be used. When I have a thread for stdin, stdout does not even receive data.
Here is the code, comments should provide more details
pub struct Runner {
handle: Child,
pub input: Arc<Mutex<String>>,
pub output: Arc<Mutex<String>>,
input_thread: JoinHandle<()>,
output_thread: JoinHandle<()>,
}
impl Runner {
pub fn new() -> Runner {
let mut handle = Command::new("node")
.stdin(Stdio::piped())
.stdout(Stdio::piped())
.spawn()
.expect("Failed to spawn node process!");
// begin stdout thread part
let mut stdout = handle.stdout.take().unwrap();
let output = Arc::new(Mutex::new(String::new()));
let out_clone = Arc::clone(&output);
let output_thread = spawn(move || loop {
// code here never executes...why ?
let mut buf: [u8; 1] = [0];
let mut output = out_clone.lock().unwrap();
let what_i_read = stdout.read(&mut buf);
println!("reading: {:?}", what_i_read);
match what_i_read {
Err(err) => {
println!("{}] Error reading from stream: {}", line!(), err);
break;
}
Ok(bytes_read) => {
if bytes_read != 0 {
let char = String::from_utf8(buf.to_vec()).unwrap();
output.push_str(char.as_str());
} else if output.len() != 0 {
println!("result: {}", output);
out_clone.lock().unwrap().clear();
}
}
}
});
// begin stdin thread block
let mut stdin = handle.stdin.take().unwrap();
let input = Arc::new(Mutex::new(String::new()));
let input_clone = Arc::clone(&input);
let input_thread = spawn(move || loop {
let mut in_text = input_clone.lock().unwrap();
if in_text.len() != 0 {
println!("writing: {}", in_text);
stdin.write_all(in_text.as_bytes()).expect("!write");
stdin.write_all("\n".as_bytes()).expect("!write");
in_text.clear();
}
});
Runner {
handle,
input,
output,
input_thread,
output_thread,
}
}
// this function should receive commands
pub fn execute(&mut self, str: &str) {
let input = Arc::clone(&self.input);
let mut input = input.lock().unwrap();
input.push_str(str);
}
}
In the main thread I'd like use this as
let mut runner = Runner::new();
runner.execute("console.log('foo'");
println!("{:?}", runner.output);
I am still new to Rust but at least I passed the point where the borrow checker makes me bang my head against the wall, I am starting to find it more pleasing now :)