Proposal to contribute Rust server library over uWebsocket CAPI in uWebSockets or uNetworking

[GenrikhFetischev]

Hello there!

I wanted to share a bit about my experience using uWebSockets in Rust and ask for your input on a potential contribution.

While working on a WebSocket server at my job, I needed to implement compression, but unfortunately, I couldn't find a suitable implementation. As a result, I wrote a Rust server library wrapper over the uWebSockets CAPI.

Since then, we've been using this library in our WebSocket server, and it appears to be working well. Recently, I discussed the possibility of opening up the source of this library, and I received pre-approval to do so.

I'm writing to gauge your interest in accepting a contribution of such a library in the uWebSockets repo, or potentially as a separate package in the uNetworking apps family. Please let me know if this is something you would be interested in pursuing.

Thank you for your time and consideration. I look forward to hearing your thoughts on this matter.

[uNetworkingAB]

If the interface is the same as in C++ and JS:

fn main() {
    let config = UsSocketContextOptions {
        key_file_name: "../misc/key.pem",
        cert_file_name: "../misc/cert.pem",
        passphrase: "1234",
        ca_file_name: "",
        dh_params_file_name: "",
        ssl_prefer_low_memory_usage: 0,
    };

    SSLApp::new(config)
        .get("/", |res, _req| {
            res.end("Hello Rust!");
        })
        .listen(3000, |_listen_socket, config| {
            println!("Listening on port https://127.0.0.1:{}", config.port);
        })
        .run();
}

then having a Rust variant is welcome

[GenrikhFetischev]

Hi,

My implementation has some differences compared to uWebSockets. It is asynchronous and uses the tokio runtime, with all route handlers expected to return futures.

Example

let mut app = App::builder()
    .data(data)
    .graceful_shutdown(exit_stream)
    .get("/hi", |req, mut res| async move {
      if let Err(e) = res.end("hello") {
        eprintln!("{e}");
      }`
    })
    .ws("/", ws_handler)
    .build();

  app.listen(3000);
  app.run();

Please, let me know if these differences are acceptable

[uNetworkingAB]

Well then it's clearly not uWS at all. It shouldn't be in this repo. None of that, has any common base with uWS.

[GenrikhFetischev]

Ok, thanks for your time. So, we will consider publishing the library as an independent package

[mtsewrs]

@GenrikhFetischev Hi, I'm interested in this library. Is it published?

[GenrikhFetischev]

@mtsewrs Not yet, but I'm working on it.
Once it's published, I will post an update in that discussion so that you can subscribe

[GenrikhFetischev]

To all who are interested, I've published a synchronous version of the Rust wrapper here. It's also available on crates.io here.

Additionally, you might be interested in the Rust libuwebsockets-sys crate, which can be found here.

@uNetworkingAB, I've designed the synchronous version to have an API almost the same with the one in C++. If you find it valuable, we can consider mentioning the existence of Rust bindings in the uWebSockets documentation.

[mtsewrs]

Awesome, great work! Could you use these bindings for async as well? i.e with tokio

[GenrikhFetischev]

Thank you!
I'm working on async lib, with tokio runtime, on top of that implementation. Hope I'll deliver that in the nearest future

[GenrikhFetischev]

To all who are interested one more time 🙂
I've published a async version of the Rust server based on tokio and sync wrapper for uWebSockets here. It's also available on crates.io here.
I'm not sure that it's really stable, I've tested only the most common use cases, but in those it works.
@mtsewrs you may want to check it out

[uNetworkingAB]

I don't understand how Tokio and uWS can be in the same project - aren't they polar opposites?

[uNetworkingAB]

Mutually exclusive*

[mtsewrs]

@GenrikhFetischev Thank you! I'll take a look

[GenrikhFetischev]

@uNetworkingAB Yep, it's kinda like I need some features from uWebSockets but don't have time to write server with them in Rust from scratch, so I decided to go with such a controversial solution.
And I don't use tokio as a event loop for uWS, I use uWS wrapped in tokio in order to be able to process requests in async way.